


Wait... What?

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Curiosity, Death Threats, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fights, Flirting, Fluff, Friendship, Games, Idiots in Love, Misunderstandings, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Possibly Unrequited Love, Romantic Friendship, Secrets, Separations, Tattoos, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2018-12-09 09:56:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 71
Words: 139,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11666787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: Reid has been hiding something (but not really) and it blows Emily's mind when she discovers it.This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story is suitable for all readers.





	1. Chapter 1

“Is that a tattoo?” she asks, doing a double-take as her brain shouts _WHAT.IS.HAPPENING?_

“Yes.”

She waits. “What? Nothing more to say about it?”

He looks up innocently through unkempt hair, reaching for his coffee mug. “I have more than one.”

And all she can think about as he walks away is _where_ and how is she going to _find it._


	2. Chapter 2

She’s been staring at him for weeks, ever since ‘The Incident’ that he accidentally-on-purpose allows to occur before it just happens randomly and beyond his control. Anyone could’ve noticed it first, but he was angling for _her._ He doesn’t care to determine if this impulse is sneaky or not.

Anyway, she’s been staring when she thinks he won’t notice (but he notices _everything_ ) and he’s a little impressed by her restraint. Then he wonders if she’ll ever ask, because if it were him and he’d waited this long, it definitely would be a question of ‘if’ over ‘when’. Somewhere in all this consideration, she does it.

“C’mon, give me a hint at least,” she leans over the desk partition between them and doesn’t bother to explain what she’s talking about. He smiles and tries not to look too satisfied.

“Tell you what, if you guess the correct location, you get to see it. No questions asked.” He leans back in his chair and then quickly adds, “But you have to justify your choice beforehand.”

She frowns a little but appears to be considering it. “Doesn’t seem simple. I didn’t even get a good look at the first one.”

“It’s not supposed to be easy.”

She frowns some more. “How many guesses do I get?”

“I won’t limit you, but each guess has to have a justification otherwise I won’t accept it.”

“Mm’kay,” she nods and then plops back down into her chair looking very serious. He thought he’d have to do more to convince her. This is working out better than he planned. He decides to enact Phase Two ahead of schedule.

“There’s something that will tilt the odds in your favor, Prentiss…”

She leans to the side to look around the partition, eyebrows raised. He smiles again with the same unconcerned innocence.

“There are _multiple_ locations.” You can hear a pin drop in their corner of the bullpen. “Good luck!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 1**

“Your calf,” she blurts out in the kitchen while he’s fixing his first coffee of the day. 

He doesn’t look at her, waits patiently as he stirs in the sugar, and then finally turns and cocks an eyebrow. She’s already forgotten the rules. He’s not sure if that’s concerning or not. He wants to think that she’s just _too interested_ to pay attention to them.

“Reasoning?” he prompts.

“Ummm.” Yep. She forgot the rules. She scrunches up her face as she struggles to find an answer. “Because it probably wouldn’t be too painful there and we’d never know about it because you always wear pants.”

“You saw me in shorts last summer at Garcia’s luau party. You called me ‘Chicken Man’, remember?”

“Dammit.” She sags. He smiles and saunters back to his desk with his coffee.

 

**Day 2**

“Between your shoulder blades,” she mumbles around a mouthful of sandwich thoughtfully. “The seventh cervical vertebrae.”

He blinks. “That’s really specific.”

“Thanks. I thought you’d appreciate that,” she winks.

“Why that location?”

“It’s a very personal, vulnerable spot on the body and you could conceivably hide it from us indefinitely because _I know_ none of us have seen you shirtless, Chicken Man.”

“Well, that’s a great guess.” He smiles and holds her gaze for a moment before he drops the hammer. “But, no.”

She leans back into her desk chair and it makes a mournful squeak. “Crap.”

 

**Day 3**

He waits all day but she says nothing.

“No guess today?” he asks as they shuffle to the elevator at day’s end.

“Nope,” she sighs, looking distracted. He sighs too as the doors close but he keeps it to himself.

 

**Day 7**

Maybe he’s made this too hard. She hasn’t guessed in days. Maybe it wasn’t as compelling a mystery as he’d hoped it would be. Maybe _he’s_ not that interesting even with all the ink…

“I know where it is. Well, one of them, anyway.” She’s suddenly manifested beside him at his desk and he yelps a little. Her gaze is sad and that is the last feeling he wants to elicit with all of this.

“Where?” he gulps.

“The bottom of your foot.”

“Which one?”

She points and he swallows. He didn’t expect her to get _that one_ first.

“Reason?”

“Because of Georgia,” she whispers and her eyes get even sadder.

He gets up and grabs her hand lightly, pulling her from the bullpen. “Come with me.”

He shuts them into the musty file storage room down the hall and then crouches to flick his shoe and roll off his sock. Then he holds onto the doorknob as he shows her the spidery ink across the arch in the dim light.

She waits a moment, taking it in. “That’s your badge number. What’s the number below it?”

“My date of birth.”

“Why?” She looks up at him.

“When someone makes you dig your own grave, you think about a lot of stuff. I thought, if I was ever in that situation again, I’d want a way for someone to i.d. me if I was ever found. I’ve never heard of a killer who checked a victim’s feet for identifying marks…”

“Christ, Reid,” she breathes as he shrugs and rolls his sock back into place. “That’s awful.”

“Tattoos can tell the story of a person’s life. Georgia was important even if it was awful. And it’s part of my story.”

They shuffle out of the storage room and back to their desks. Prentiss looks upset and thoughtful, and he thinks maybe this wasn’t such a good plan after all.

“Congratulations though. I didn’t think you’d get that one.” He waits a moment, then just dives in. “Did it turn you off the game?”

Her head whips up a little too fast. “No. I mean… no. But if they’re all so personal, maybe you don’t want me to guess anymore.”

“I still want you to guess,” he says quietly. He wants more than that but one step at a time.


	4. Chapter 4

“Your butt,” she says leaning back on her arms as she sits on the federally-mandated, postage stamp of lawn overlooking the Quantico parking lot.

Reid is stretched out beside her, feet poking out into the sidewalk beyond, sunglasses in place and pretending there’s enough UV action to warrant them. His eyebrows rise slowly above the rim of his Ray Bans and then slink down just as slowly into what she imagines is an unimpressed scowl. He doesn’t get up from the lawn though.

“I’m not taking that as a serious guess,” he huffs. “If you don’t want to do this, you can quit any time.”

That’s the second time he’s suggested that she stop playing their game. She wonders if he actually _wants_ her to quit but is just too polite to admit it. Her first winning guess had been way too personal and it was both a thrilling and upsetting discovery; Reid is ridiculously private. She still can’t work out what he’s getting from this.

“It WAS a serious guess.” She tries to sound offended.

“I don’t have a tattoo on my butt,” he sighs. “And I’m not gonna ask why you think I do because I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.”

This isn’t going well. She wants to make this fun so that he knows she’s still into it, but he just seems bored. A bored Spencer Reid is a terrible thing, and it’s even worse to be the cause of that boredom. She wants him to keep opening up because it’s oddly compelling, but if he’s no longer enjoying it… Maybe he just needs an incentive.

“Well, how about this… my guess was ‘butt’, it was wrong, so perhaps for each wrong guess I make, you get to ask me a personal question. Like a punishment.”

 _That_ gets his attention. He raises his head from the grass and lifts his glasses so he can look her in the eye. “I’m not trying to punish you.” Then, after a moment of thought, “What kind of personal questions?”

Emily smiles a little. “Any kind you like.”

“Are you sure about that?” His eyebrows pop up instantly. “I wouldn’t want to overstep by accident.”

“You couldn’t overstep, Spencer,” she says warmly and is satisfied when he notices the use of his first name instead of his last. She’s pretty sure she’s hooked him again. “Nothing’s off limits, so ask your first question. What’ll it be?”

He finally sits up and folds himself into a gangly, thinking pretzel shape on the grass next to her.

“Let’s keep it thematic today,” he mumbles eventually. “Aside from pierced ears, do you have any body modifications? If so, name one of your choosing.”

She feels a small flicker of excitement. “Not anymore, but in college I got drunk at a party one night and when I woke up the next day I discovered my left nipple was pierced.”

He goes completely still and when he speaks it’s the calmest, flattest _‘Really’_ she’s ever heard from him. She just nods and smiles. She can’t remember the last person she told that story to and it feels slightly sordid and fun to do it now.

“I tried keeping it for a while but the damned thing got infected all the time so it was more trouble than it was worth. And it permanently deformed the… well, _area_ , so…” she huffs. “Too bad though. It was sorta sexy.”

She’s making it sound casual and banal, but her pulse has kicked up to see how much Reid is muting his response. This was a terrific idea, she thinks.

“Body piercings have a wide range of recovery periods. It depends on the location, really. Nipples require anywhere from two to four months,” Reid begins to babble in a very Reid-like way. “It comes as a shock to many, as well as the possible side effects like keloids, bacterial endocarditis, abscesses, and various inflammations and infections, which can linger long after the piercing has been removed.”

“Well, I know that _now_ …” She rolls her eyes at him and the pinkness in his cheeks deepens. “My left boob would’ve appreciated that info before I got hammered and let some needle have its way with it.”

“Yes. Obviously.” He clears his throat. “Any other, umm, modifications?”

She wags a finger at him and smiles. “One question for one wrong answer, Smartypants. You’ll just have to wait until I screw up again.” 

He sags slightly and tries to cover it up by collecting the remnants of his lunch. She suddenly thinks that their adventure is progressing nicely again.

“C’mon, sun worshipper,” she reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “Let’s pretend it’s more summer than it actually is and get an ice cream from the cafeteria.”

He smiles back, completely at ease once more. “A secret _and_ ice cream? This is possibly the best lunch break I’ve had all week.”


	5. Chapter 5

She makes her next successful guess entirely by accident – no profiling prowess at all. He’s busy scribbling away at a monstrous pile of files in front of him at the Wakita police department when it hits her and she can’t believe she’s never noticed it before.

“Your right index finger,” she leans across the desk and hisses as if she’s just identified a scorpion on him.

He looks up and blinks as if it takes a second to change gears. And then his innocent look is back and she puts a stop to what she knows he’s going to say next.

“I don’t need a reason. I can _see it._ ”

He looks down and wiggles his finger around, like it’s a surprise. “I guess that’s true, isn’t it?”

On the inside of his finger are four marks: a dot, a line, a square, and a circle. The ink is dull and blurred at the edges of the shapes making them look more like spots or the pen marks that his hands are often littered with. In fact, she decides _that’s_ the reason why she’s never noticed them before, even though his hands are often front and center whenever he talks.

“I wonder why no one’s said anything until now?” he continues, mostly to himself.

“What are they?” She’s worried about asking, and whether his answer will be as unsettling as the first one was.

“Sphere, square, line, and point,” he states unhelpfully. After a moment, he clarifies. “From _Flatland_.”

“Well, there’s got to be a story behind that,” she huffs and waits.

“Umm, well, see in _Flatland_ there are beings who live in different-”

“I’ve read _Flatland_ , Spence,” she holds up a hand to stop his book report.

“You have?” He grins broadly, lighting him up.

“Sure. I went to college.” She shrugs, trying to act like that smile hasn’t just made her afternoon.

“ _Flatland_ isn’t on any but the most hardcore of Victorian reading syllabi.”

“It was a gateway book to Vonnegut for me. Quit changing the subject. WHY did you get anthropomorphized, romantic geometry tattooed on your finger?”

“Well, I was leaving for CalTech and was worried about getting homesick. I’d just turned eighteen…”

She tries to imagine him at that age – all skinny and weird and socially dangerous towards himself.

“Mom was in Bennington by then and I was really on my own. I wanted something… comforting to take with me when I left. _Flatland_ is one of my favorite books, so I had these done where I could always see them. And, yeah, it was comforting.” He looks up from his finger and smiles. “Not much of a story, I guess. Sometimes even I forget it’s there.”

“I can’t believe that you’ve worked in a viper’s nest of profiling genius for so many years and no one has noticed it,” she sighs. “It’s like a visual reprimand to all of us for being unobservant dumbasses.”

She is certainly guilty of that. There’s a whole world of him that she’s only just getting a glimpse at now, and she’s only getting it because she saw something by accident.

He laughs hard, leaning back dangerously into his rickety chair. “I like my story better.”

“I like your story better too,” she quietly murmurs as he continues to chuckle across from her.


	6. Chapter 6

He wants her to screw up. He wants it so badly that if he thinks about it for too long it causes him shame.

He thought she was done after that first successful guess, and in all honesty, he couldn’t blame her for that. It was an intense moment and – let’s face it – he’s an intense guy most of the time, and that’s usually the reason why no one hangs out with him for too long. He’s accepted it over the years but he doesn’t want that _with her_ , and the idea that this game he’s invented to draw her in a little more has gone so wrong so soon makes him a little sick to his stomach. He’s not prepared for her to decide that getting to know him better is too much work.

But then she turns around and ups the ante, and now he _can’t wait_ for her to make an incorrect guess again. He’s lost some control over the game but it doesn’t bother him as much as he thinks it should.

He’s standing over the printer trying to figure out how he can move this whole process along, when the infernal machine shudders to a noisy halt, making noises and flashing ominously at him. He swears under his breath – because it ALWAYS happens when he’s printing something for some reason – and begins dismantling the front face to determine the problem. He’s halfway inside the machine when she appears from out of nowhere (and he’s sure that she’s doing this on purpose now) and scares the crap out of him.

“You broke it _again?_ ” she whines.

He yelps too loudly to be ignored and then smashes his head twice as he tries to extricate himself. He also doesn’t realize that his hands are covered in toner until he’s already rubbed a sore spot on his head. She’s trying not to smirk and failing. He gives her a glare.

“Why?” he hisses, not really expecting an answer, and then, “I didn’t break it. It’s totally fixable. I just don’t know how yet.”

“I’ve never heard of an engineer who breaks so many things so often.”

“Clearly, you don’t know many engineers,” he huffs as he stands. “All we do is break things. It’s a career track and the source of our job security.”

“I don’t think that’s true in your case,” she chuckles.

“Did you need the printer?” he asks and then looks at the offending piece of technology sheepishly. “ ‘Cause, ummm… it’s broken…”

She laughs again. Hard. He can’t help smiling and blushing and feeling sorta awesome all at once. Then she reaches out and squeezes his arm.

“I actually came to find you,” she whispers as she leans closer. “I have another guess.”

His pulse jumps. _Pleaseletitbewrong, pleaseletitbewrong, pleaseletitbewrong…_

“And?”

“Left bicep.”

_Dammit._

“Why there?”

“It’s a traditional spot for men to get tattooed,” she says smugly.

“That’s not a terribly insightful reason,” he mutters.

“That doesn’t matter so long as I’m right. Am I?”

He nods and heads for file storage again. “Come on.”

They huddle inside and shut the door. He undoes his left shirt cuff and begins rolling the sleeve up his arm.

“Why did you choose the left one?”

“Well, your foot one is on the left, but the other two tattoos I’ve seen are on your right side. I don’t know how many others there are or their distribution, but I thought I’d bank on your appreciation of symmetry. I had a 50/50 chance of being right.”

She winks at him and he’s a little impressed despite himself, because her answer shows more consideration than he initially thought.

“Not bad,” he mumbles as he finally works the shirt up over the widest part of the muscle and twists so that she can see the black script along the inner length of his arm.

“1 = 0.999999999999…” she murmurs and her face creases. She looks up at him. “I don’t get it.”

“What’s not to get? Think about it for a moment, Emily.”

She seems a little taken aback that he’s making her work for this. “Ummm, well, it’s an equation, and you’re a mathematician, so that makes sense I guess.”

“What does the _math_ tell you?”

“That 1 is equal to 0.9-to infinity?”

“Yes. See? You do get it. That’s the point: even someone with only a rudimentary understanding of math knows what these symbols mean. No Greek letters or cosines or quizzical structures. It’s as basic and recognizable as letters in the alphabet.”

“Yeah, but what does it _mean_ , Spencer? To you?” She stares at it again, and then, to his shock, she reaches out and drags her fingers lightly over the script. He isn’t prepared for that and his muscle flexes involuntarily under the pads of her fingers. She looks up at him and waits for an answer, but doesn’t lift her hand away. Maybe she didn’t notice his reaction.

“It’s simple and that gives it beauty,” he says too breathily but soldiers on as he looks her in the eye. “But it’s more than that. The left side – the 1 – is the beginning of mathematical understanding. The right side is mystery – something that math can define while simultaneously allow to remain obscure. Infinity is something we can’t really comprehend and yet we have _named it_ , given it a shape. This equation illustrates two things I love in one simple phrase, and anyone who sees it can understand it. It’s so elegant and powerful.”

“Mystery and certainty,” she mumbles thoughtfully and then nods in understanding. “Opposing sides of the spectrum, in a way…”

“Yes,” he grins and his pulse thumps a little more forcefully. He doesn’t realize that his fingers have joined hers until her eyes move to the tattoo again. He’s smeared toner along his bicep as well as the tips of her fingers. But she doesn’t pull them away when she sees it.

“That’s pretty cool, actually.” She smiles as she says it and he feels an alien swell of pride deep inside him.

“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever been ‘cool’… This would be a first.”

She pulls her fingers away but gives him a warm look as she does it. “Well, it’s just this woman’s opinion.”

“I’ll take it,” he grins too widely and completely ignores that he gets toner on his shirt as well as he rolls it back down over his arm.

He was hoping she’d screw up, but this turns out to be so much better.


	7. Chapter 7

She’s looking at the back of his head when it occurs to her. It would be pretty hardcore, but as she’s quickly learning, he’s isn’t at all as he appears on the surface. She twists around to check out the rest of the jet – everyone’s asleep or under headphones, whipped by a ten-day case. When she decides the coast is clear, she leans up against the back of his seat and whispers in his ear.

“Do you have one on your head?”

He twitches in a way that secretly delights her, but then she feels bad because he might have been sleeping. He turns to look at her and appears a little dazed. Yep, probably was asleep.

“What?” he mumbles.

“On your head somewhere.” She makes a messy gesture with her fingers. “You know… in all of that hair.”

He looks at her fingers with interest and she suddenly wonders what his hair would feel like. It looks so soft… light, even. She shakes her head a little and wonders when she developed so many handsy reactions to her buddy.

“I don’t have a head tattoo.” He looks a little disappointed as he says it. She can’t figure out why. Then she quickly gets up and slides into the seat next to him facing away from the rest of the cabin.

“Well, I guess it’s my turn to pay the piper then…”

His exhaustion clears almost instantly as a weird sparkle replaces it in his expression. It makes her feel like her guts are being wound up like a children’s toy, each turn coiling her a little tighter. It’s another strange reaction and part of her is elated that she failed and he gets to ask her something in return. This sort of exposure should make her want to itch herself out of her own skin. He spends a long time just staring at her, thinking.

“Have you ever…” He seems to doubt himself and then ducks his gaze. “Did you ever wish that you were someone else?”

She blinks. It’s certainly a personal question but not one that she was remotely expecting. She also thinks it says a lot more about him than her.

“Honestly,” she murmurs, waiting for him to meet her eyes again. “No, Spencer. I’m far from perfect and there are things about me that I don’t like but… I’ve always felt that I am exactly who I’m meant to be.”

His eyes flick away again as he nods and his cheeks get rosy. “Yeah… yeah, of course. That makes sense.”

“Why does that make sense?”

“Well, because… maybe… you already have a lot going for you.”

That stops her dead in her tracks for an instant. “Spence, you have a lot going for you as well. A LOT.” She shuffles a little closer so that their shoulders almost brush. “Self-perception is a cunning trap – you know this. What brought this on?”

“Nothing,” he shrugs. “Nothing, really. I was just curious about it. I guess you never really outgrow the awkward kid part of yourself, no matter how your life turns out.”

It’s like a light switches on and she just suddenly ‘gets it’: his ridiculous boundaries and this strange game he’s concocted, the closeness they’ve had from day one as well as the mystery that she’s only now starting to uncover… His mission is simple. They are toddlers in a sandbox in the playground making friends over a shared peanut butter and jam sandwich. That’s what he wants it to be (even though it always has been) – that joyous and true – but he’s afraid life doesn’t work that way as an adult. He has experiences that tell him otherwise.

“We probably don’t,” she smiles gently, thinking this is the best revelation to date. “But I can tell you that I wasn’t like this as a kid. I was all grass stains and scraped knees, tangled pigtails and mud puddle splatters. And I guess I still am, underneath it all. The reckless tomboy and the woman with a weapon all smooshed up together, ya know? It’s all me every day.”

He grins at that, wide and relieved. _Good_ , she thinks as she mentally accepts half of his pb&j and thanks him for sharing it.

“We’re not one thing, Spence,” she sighs and leans her head back against the seat as she watches him. “How boring would our stories be if we were?”

“Hmmm.” He mimics her and leans his head against his own seat. “That would be boring.”

“Yeah, right? Who needs that! Weird is better. Weird adds spice. I’m fine with weird.”

The smile he gives her is indescribably beautiful.


	8. Chapter 8

He dreams of her hands running through his hair, and of a girl with loose pigtails and band aids on her knees who sits next to him under the shade of a grand oak tree. She laughs all the time – making him laugh – and when she grabs his hand as they run together, they are both sticky from the popsicles they’ve shared.

He wakes from these dreams into precious moments of sun-dappled peace and contentment. But they fade when he shaves, knots his tie, clips his revolver to his hip… She’s not _actually that_ and he knows it.

He’s falling for a fantasy.


	9. Chapter 9

A lump of ramen noodles slip off the spoon and splash Reid with fish broth _again._ He twitches like a pissed off cat and scowls at his take-out. It’s all Emily can do to just watch him from across the desk and not spontaneously implode from repressed cackling. He’s been at it for twenty minutes now – he must be starving. The soup is winning.

He tries again, gets half a mouthful, and another splatter for his trouble. He’ll have to change his shirt when this is all over. He really should’ve known better when J.J. suggested the new Japanese noodle place for lunch. He’d only specified ‘no chopsticks’ and hadn’t thought any further.

“Oh come _on!_ ” he hisses under his breath and she just can’t take it anymore. She laughs out loud and it makes his entire frame go stiff in his chair. Finally, he gives her a pitiful look as her giggling peters out. “I’m utterly failing as a human today.”

“Oh,” she coos unsympathetically. “Why’s that, sunshine?”

He shoots her a dirty look. “I lost my car keys for half an hour this morning, I’m wearing MATCHED socks, I left my swipe card at my desk last night so George in security gave me a hard time today, I drew the short straw at the crime scene and Morgan made me search the dumpster for evidence, and then there’s _this…_ ” He jabs his spoon murderously at his noodles. “I’m distracted, I smell, I’m destined to go hungry, and I’m covered in fish juice. Stupid Tuesday.”

She clucks a little because he’s being dramatic and ridiculous, but she also takes pity on him because it really sounds like he’s having a bad day. She grabs her chopsticks and gets up. Smiling, she dips them into his soup container and efficiently rips his noodle clumps into smaller, spoon-friendly segments. And then she licks the broth from the chopsticks. He just stares down into his soup bowl in amazement, then to her, then back to the soup.

“Chopsticks,” she hums and clacks them together when he looks at her as if she’s speaking in tongues.

“Huh. I mean… thanks.” He seems astonished, and then ever more so when he manages to get a full mouthful of his lunch. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You’re in a brain cloud, remember?” He looks at her funny and she makes swirling motions with the chopsticks. “Stupid Tuesday and the matched socks…”

“Oh, uh… yeah.” His cheeks get rosy. “Sorry for the tantrum.”

“It’s fine.” She watches him pout and then she does something without thinking. She leans down and takes a deep sniff along the side of his neck. Then she pulls back to face him, still too close to be appropriate. “You smell fine to me,” she murmurs and smiles at him. “Maybe a little fishy, but not bad.”

He just blinks at her, eyes wide like a cartoon. Then it hits her what she’s done and she backs away to her chair again, pulse thumping ominously as she scares herself a little. _What was that about?_ She’s probably frightened him off properly now.

“You’ll have to change your shirt though,” she coughs as she shuffles the remains of her lunch into the garbage. “Stains, ya know…”

“Yeah.” His voice is too high and indistinct behind her, then he pulls it together. “Yes. I’ll just… go change.”

He gets up and disappears down the hall quickly. She sags into her chair and huffs out a breath as she watches him go. “Jesus, Em… Stupid Tuesday indeed.”


	10. Chapter 10

She doesn’t make a guess for nine days and he starts to wonder what he’s done wrong. Things were going well – they both appeared to be enjoying the game and he was certainly feeling more at ease with her. But then there was the noodle lunch thing and she got way too close and he got way too excited about the possibilities that suggested. He could kick himself for freezing up the way he did. All this sharing of secrets and he lets something as mundane as physical proximity screw it up. 

He just couldn’t believe that she was so near. Her hair tickled his neck. She smelled like face cream and a hint of jasmine. Her eyes were just luminous when they were inches away from him. He couldn’t breathe… Jesus, he’s having trouble breathing right now just remembering it.

 _Amateur. Nerd. Loser._ He thought he was better than that just because he was inked and smart, but he’s really just the same, skinny dork from his childhood no one wanted to befriend. Why would _Emily_ of all people want _him?_ It didn’t make any sense and now he’s made her feel uncomfortable and she’s backing off.

 _That’s_ what’s happening now.

“Hey, Reid.”

He looks up and sees Emily’s halfway to the next door they should knock on for their neighborhood canvas. _Reid, not Spencer anymore._ Her eyebrow cocks at him when he continues to stare.

“Reid, are you with me here or what?”

“Yeah, yes… right here.” He follows her up the front stairs and ignores her concerned expression. They finish their canvas without further interruptions.

Later, he’s zoning out staring at the whiteboard they’ve commandeered from the Pittsburgh homicide department. He’s making zero progress with his geoprofile and he suddenly sees the wisdom in lifelong celibacy – at least you had the discipline to get things done.

“Ummm, hey, are you busy?”

He makes an unflattering sound and then turns to find Emily lingering nervously in the doorway. _Nervously? Why is she nervous?_ He shakes off the feeling and tries to be CAPABLE instead.

“I should be busy but my brain apparently has other plans.” He waves dismissively at the whiteboard. “What’s up? Do you need something?”

“I don’t need anything, per se.” She shuffles into the room, then lowers her voice a little. “I have another guess.”

_Oh god, really? REALLY?_

“But if you have work to do, I can-”

“What’s your guess?” he asks breathlessly.

“Right bicep.” She points to his arm.

“Reason?”

She sighs and rolls on her feet. “Just a shot in the dark, really. I just wanted to make another guess.”

Oh. Oh, that was fine. More than fine.

He walks towards her in a daze and takes her hand. Then they’re walking through the busy squad room together as he searches for some place away from all the bustle. He settles for a broom closet that smells like Pine Sol and urinal cakes, and has only a single, dangling lightbulb to help them out. The meager light glows over them in swinging arcs as he rolls his shirt sleeve up and reveals the tattoo on his outer arm. Emily squints and then reaches up to still the light so she can get a better look.

“Oh!” she blurts and then looks at him. “That’s you!”

He glances down at the spidery drawing of a gangly, bespectacled boy in a stripy shirt and short pants hanging onto a balloon string, but the balloon is actually the moon. The boy is dangling above the world, one foot with a shoe, one without, but he’s smiling. He’s innocent and happy and free. Reid strokes the faded lines of the drawing and finds himself smiling back.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“It’s lovely.” Her fingers hover over it but she hesitates. He looks up at her. “Who drew it?” she asks eventually.

“I did.”

Her eyes meet his.

“I was seven and we had an assignment to draw ourselves. Almost everyone did colorful stick figures of their families. I did this.” He points to the tattoo. “The teacher gave me a failing grade. It’s the only one I ever received.”

“What? Why?” Emily looks horrified but he can’t help but smile at the memory.

“She didn’t believe that a seven-year-old would represent themselves figuratively. And I put a lot of detail into the moon craters. See?” He traces the figure with care. “She thought someone else drew it. But I was just really into the moon back then. It was shortly after William left us.” He takes a deep breath. “In this, Mom is the moon – all distant and serene, but comforting too.”

When he looks up, he sees that she understands but there isn’t the pity that he expects to come along with that understanding.

“Just you and your Mom,” she murmurs. “On an adventure.”

“Yeah. I knew she wasn’t well but I thought if we just held onto each other, we’d be okay.” He strokes the drawing again and smiles. “I think this one is my favorite.”

Her fingers finally land on his arm, following the path of his in a slow, tickling drag. “What a dumbass teacher you had,” she grumbles and he laughs out loud. She’s touching him and he’s fine – they are both fine. They’re back and everything’s okay again.

“Mom was incensed when she found out.” His fingers find hers and they rest together against his arm. “She marched into the Principal’s office and gave him a piece of her mind, then she did the same to my teacher, and then she withdrew me from the school and moved me to another district within a week. She said she wouldn’t accept the authority of a faculty that encouraged mediocrity over individual excellence and creativity.”

“Good for her.”

He chuckles. “I don’t know how excellent it was. I drew it on a napkin. But she framed it anyway. It still hangs in her room at Bennington.”

She curls a finger around his and he holds his breath. She’s smiling in a way that makes him believe he’ll fall victim to whatever she says next.

“I dunno. Sounds like she knew what she was talking about. She held onto it and so did you. That’s pretty damned excellent, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

She laughs a little, like she can’t hold it in any longer, and he melts. “Thank you for showing me, Spencer.”

“Well, that’s the deal, right?”

“Yeah, but this one’s special. I think it’s my favorite too.”

He wants to stay in this broom closet and feel this way with her forever.


	11. Chapter 11

“Tell me about this one.”

She reaches out and flicks a finger under his open collar along the right side of his neck. He looks up at her across the picnic table in Rossi’s backyard, but doesn’t flinch. She sorta misses it – the flinching – she doesn’t know why, but perhaps the lack of surprise is more rewarding. Touching is fine now after years of it _not_ being fine. His gaze is calm yet cautious, flicking beyond her to see if anyone is spying on them. He pushes his half-finished beer away and shrugs around in his loose-fitting shirt.

“They are stars.”

“I can see that,” she huffs. “I saw that the first day, remember? That’s what got this whole thing rolling. But you’ve never explained them.”

“Well, it started out as one thing, and now it’s another.” He sighs. “It’s difficult to explain.”

“Okay… well, can I see all of it, because half of it is covered by your shirt-” She slides her hand under his collar and over his shoulder to move the fabric but his hand flashes up and grasps her too tightly by the wrist. She gasps and he lets her go immediately.

_Jesus… I thought it was all right. Fuck, fuck, Emily, why can’t you just let things be… why do you have to push all the time?_

They both blurt out ‘sorry’ at the same time and he looks as upset as she feels.

“Emily, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. It was just… reactive. I-”

“No, it’s fine. I overstepped. I know how you feel about being touched.”

“No, that’s _not it at all._ ” He slaps his palm against the picnic table and she’s the one who jumps this time. His expression is halfway between angry and apologetic, and his eyes are darting around like he’s about to launch into a full-blown panic attack. This has gone downhill so quickly that she can barely wrap her mind around it. Then he stands up from the table, curling his fists at his sides.

“Come inside,” he says urgently and quietly. She looks up at him. “Please. I’ll explain. Just… not out here in front of everyone.”

Emily looks around and it’s as if she’s existing in an alternate reality of the same party. Everyone’s having fun, laughing at Morgan as he fails miserably at limbo. Rossi’s at the grill, Hotch is rummaging through the cooler, J.J. and Will are half keeping an eye on Morgan and half on Henry, Garcia’s teasing Morgan’s lack of flexibility, Anderson’s trying to hit on an oblivious Lewis, Jack has disappeared down the back of the garden which almost certainly means he’ll come back dirty… and over in her corner, Emily has pushed Reid too far and a storm is coming.

“Please,” she hears him say again, and when she looks back, he’s desperate. She can’t say no. She gets up and follows him inside as he dashes around from room to room until he finds a spot that meets his unknowable, internal criteria. He pulls her into what turns out to be Rossi’s writing study, and shuts the door.

Reid turns to face her, scared in a way she can’t grasp, and begins unbuttoning his shirt.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” She rushes forward and grabs his hands, stopping his progress. “What is going on right now, Spencer? Thirty seconds ago you didn’t want me touching you, and now you’re gonna whip your shirt off? You need to start talking. Immediately.”

“The touching was fine,” he gasps. “At least, I think it was fine… I dunno. It’s personal… this one is… personal.”

“Hey, hey… okay,” she soothes, dragging one of his hands away and just holding it at their sides. Just _holding._ “That’s fine. That’s all you had to say, Spence. I don’t need to know. You should’ve just told me to mind my own business.”

“But I _want_ you to know. That’s the whole point.” He huffs as he twists his face away from hers. He’s still clearly upset and can’t hide it from her.

“You don’t have to push your boundaries for me. That’s not what this is about.”

“Well, maybe it’s about that for me,” he says a little too sharply. 

She looks at him and he meets her eyes with a stare that’s electric as well as desperate. He’s determined but also scared and it’s playing out across his face. She backs away a step releasing his hand, and then she just _waits._ If he needs to do this, and if she has to be his witness, she won’t stand in his way. But she’s not going to force anything. She tries to funnel all of that as she stares back at him.

He watches her and seems to calm a little, which she takes as a good sign. Then he takes a step back as well, licking his lips and swallowing a few times before speaking.

“Could you, uh… could you stand behind me? At my back? That will be easier for me.” He shrugs in his shirt like Hotch does when he’s nervous. She nods slowly and then circles around until she’s behind him. She keeps well back, giving him as much space as he needs.

“I’m here,” she murmurs and he nods.

“Thank you. I appreciate this, Emily,” he says gently. Then he undoes the rest of his shirt and shrugs it off one shoulder at a time.

And her breath leaves her.

It’s stars – dozens and dozens and dozens of them, across his back and littering his shoulders, the last of which curls over his right side and is the one she saw months before. It’s a solar system. No, a galaxy. Some are just dots, some have greater detail. It’s intricate and painstaking and _endless._ It’s making her dizzy trying to comprehend the amount of work and time that’s been spent here. Some of the details are blurred from age and weathering, others are sharp and raised blue-black on his skin, telling her they are much newer. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what to do. She wants to touch it but she’s scared shitless of him in this moment.

“This is the world I’ve made,” he whispers.

“P-pardon?”

“The people I’ve helped, the ones I’ve hurt, the people I’ve killed, the ones I didn’t get to in time to save… there’s a star for every one of them.”

“Jesus… jesus…”

“I know,” he says quietly and bows his head. “It’s not a sane thing to do.”

“But… but _why_ , Spencer?” she chokes out, still unable to wrap her head around the breadth of this choice.

“Because they are a part of my story. Some of them blinked into nothingness. Some of them may still be out there and think they mean nothing to anyone. Well, they mean something to me.”

She starts breathing hard enough to be audible, and her mind is just a blank slate – no language or thoughts or questions. He takes a cautious step backwards, towards her and then looks at her over his shoulder.

“Do you see the dots in the center? The ones that are linked by lines?”

She focuses, happy to take orders and just act rather than trying to think. She nods. The dots are old, more like moles or birth marks and the lines are barely visible.

“That’s Simone. She was my first star.” He waits for her eyes to rise to his again, and then he smiles haltingly, as if he’s afraid to spook her. How ironic.

“Simone was a teacher’s assistant in the math department of LVNU. She was pretty and smart and going places because of it. She was also petty and cruel in a way that many young, beautiful women are without really trying to be. I didn’t know that then, but I understand it now. I was seventeen – a child in all the ways that really mattered – and I had a crush on her. We worked together for a year and nothing happened. Nothing was supposed to happen – I was a naïve boy and she was oblivious and had a boyfriend.”

He pauses for a moment, looks away from her, and then starts again.

“One night we were working late in my residence suite and… it just happened. I was too shocked to object, too delirious to worry about the consequences or _why_ she was doing it. She told me I was wonderful, a generous and gentle lover in a way her boyfriend wasn’t.”

“Oh Spencer…” Emily feels a little sick.

“We carried on for a few weeks – I thought I was in love. She enjoyed drawing on me, connecting spots on my arms and back into strange constellations of her own devising with a ballpoint pen. That constellation at the center of my back is the last one she drew on me.”

Emily’s afraid to ask, but… “What happened to her?”

“She used me to get her boyfriend’s attention, but he didn’t appreciate her methods so he reported her to the department chair instead of chasing after her. I was technically underage and she was in a position of authority over me, not to mention that the college saw me as an academic asset that they needed to protect. She lost her job, her housing, and the grant money she was using to support herself as she did her doctoral studies. She was also physically banned from the math department in an attempt to ‘defend’ me from her, so she was essentially kicked out of school as well. I tried to change their minds – I went to the department chair, the dean of students – but I was treated like an abuse victim and sent to counselling services instead.”

“She _did_ abuse you, Spencer.”

“Maybe,” he shrugs his shoulders. “I’ve never seen it that way. I know now it was just lust and revenge, but I’m not angry at her. It doesn’t even really bother me that she used me to get back at her boyfriend for something stupid. She was young too and her choice destroyed her life. That never seemed right to me. I wish I could’ve helped her turn that around, but at seventeen I wasn’t in a position to do that. I went out and got her constellation inked instead, so I’d never forget her, never forget any of it.”

He stares at her over his shoulder looking for _something._ She still doesn’t know what to say, but her entire being wants to hug him. She’s not sure that’s something she should either want or do though.

“After Gideon recruited me, after my first few cases… it was tougher than I thought it would be. The people we meet – we enter their lives at the worst possible moment – that’s a heavy responsibility. I had to find a way to be okay with it and not lose myself. That’s when I thought about Simone and how what she did could’ve crushed me at such a vulnerable moment. But that didn’t happen. And that’s when I started adding stars to hers. I didn’t want to ignore the things I’d seen or their responsibility, but I didn’t want to be plagued by them either. That’s why there are stars for everyone – good and bad, important and fleeting – they’re all connected to me and me to them. It just _is._ ”

She swallows a few times and then finds her voice. “E-everyone’s there?”

“Sure. Mom, Gideon, Hankel, Hotch, you, my neighbor across the hall, Anderson…”

“Anderson’s in there?” She barks out an unexpected laugh that seems to pop the tension around them instantly. He smirks at her over his shoulder.

“Yeah. He drove me home a few times. He gets a star for that.”

She laughs again and it feels _soooo good_ , like they are ‘them’ again. A moment passes and she can hear the party outside, muted by the walls around them. Then she hears him sigh and it’s like a gunshot in the room bringing her back to this monumental change that’s overtaken them.

“I’ve kept to myself for a long time, Emily. Sometimes it feels like my whole life. But at times I think that… maybe Simone did do some lasting damage. I believed in a sort of… innocence back then. Mom would characterize it as something ethereal, transcendent – like a kinship of souls or something. But after Simone, I think I lost that.”

Emily’s chest seizes up on her and pushes out a breath that may or may not form the word ‘no’. He doesn’t appear to notice.

“It’s been fine. I’ve managed. But now I feel… like I want others to know. I want to be less… protective of myself. That’s why I had the latest stars done in a place where they might be seen. I guess I wanted to provoke discovery.”

He looks at her squarely, expression controlled but eyes sad.

“This is who I am and it’s… really weird. There’s no denying that. But I thought, maybe… well, you said you were okay with weird.”

His last sentence comes out a little breathlessly and it energizes her, making her walk forward but stop short of touching him. She feels like she’s pulsing all over. She wants to reach out to this intangible thing he’s offering – so fragile and, yes, innocent. It’s breaking her heart a little.

“It’s not that weird, Spence. We’ve both seen a lot weirder and you know it,” she murmurs. He stares at her, hair spilling into his face and half hiding him from her.

“You can touch them, if you want to,” he whispers. “Earlier… I wasn’t reacting to the touch. It was only… I needed you to understand what it meant before you did it. That’s all. You know, symbols are powerful. Maybe you wouldn’t want to touch them if you knew. It’s intense. _I’m_ intense…”

Oh. But she wanted to touch them, and now she really, really, _really_ wants to touch them. And she’s absolutely sure that’s it’s wrong to feel this way about that – all heated and close. He’s offering something pure and genuine – a slice of his soul – and she feels… something _else._

She raises her hand without thinking about it and brushes her fingertips across the swell of his shoulders. The newer stars feel rough and impermanent, like stamps on a parcel, but the older ones are just him – skin and warmth and form. He goes still, holding his breath, and then she adds her other hand, skimming the stars further down his spine closer to Simone. She skips her fingers over the memory of the woman who stole his youth and refuses to give her anymore of her time. Her fingers trip across the notches of his spine and get lost in tracing meandering paths through his galaxy.

She feels him turn his head away to face forward and then his held breath stutters out of him. His skin pimples as her hands move and she wonders if he’s cold in the chilly house. She crowds closer so that her blouse brushes his back, adding some warmth to his exposure. Then he steps back into her solidly and it’s her turn to hold her breath. He leans his head back, almost staring at the ceiling as his hair skips down over his shoulders and into her hair. Her hands move then, circling around his chest and clasping together to hold him. His ribs poke her as he breathes ‒ in and out, in and out ‒ and she thinks she can feel the rapid patter of his pulse through them somehow. She presses her cheek against his back and tells herself to breathe again. And they remain like that, wrapped together in silence.

It’s never been like this, she thinks. It’s never been like this but now she doesn’t want to let go. She wants it to be _this way_ from now on, but doesn’t know how to ask or what it’s called. Is this what happens when the toddlers in the sandbox grow up? Is this what that friendship feels like when your emotional understanding broadens?

His hands suddenly close around hers against his chest. “Thank you,” he sighs, and she breathes out against his back. 

Christ, she should be thanking him.


	12. Chapter 12

When he dreams of that moment in Rossi’s study (and he does dream about it), he adds one thing that never happened. After she wraps him up in her grasp, after he thanks her and she shakes a little against his back, he turns in her arms, cups her face and kisses her.

The kiss never happened so he has no idea what it would actually feel like, but in his dream it’s like sitting under that oak tree with the girl in pigtails. It’s contentment and a lazy wish that the moment could be endless. The dream always ends before the kiss does, and he’s grateful for that. There’s no opening his eyes to read the reaction in hers, no awkward, stumbling justifications for allowing himself to indulge in a one-sided fantasy. The dream is always perfect except… he only feels himself, _his_ reaction to it all. It’s like she’s not really there. Which, of course, she isn’t.

He knows this is no better than pining after Simone when he was seventeen. Some things never change.


	13. Chapter 13

After the party, she doesn’t guess again for a while. He doesn’t feel as desperate as when she stopped guessing before, but it still bothers him.

He’s achieved what he wanted when he began: he caught her attention, revealed what he’s kept hidden for so long, and she wasn’t repulsed by it. She makes a point of smiling at him every day – not the teammate smile, one just for them – and they chat and hang out and do all the things they did before he gave her his secret. She’s telling him that they are fine – they are still friends. He should be delighted. But he’s not. There’s something missing.

He’s brooding about this at his desk instead of doing his expense report when an extra-large caramel macchiato levitates into view and then lands on his desk blotter. He looks up and sees her smiling as she shuffles to her desk with her own coffee in hand.

“Thought you could use a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.”

He takes a long, loud slurp and rolls his eyes closed in bliss. “You are a goddess. A caffeine-purveying goddess.” She laughs at him. Or with him. One or the other.

“What are you thinking on over there anyway?” she asks, one side of her mouth curling upward. “It’s like you’ve been lost in your Mind Palace all day.”

Mind Palace. Wow. She really has snuck into him and started to unfold his inner workings a little. It feels… strange. Like a violation but also something he’s been seeking out forever.

“Nothing,” he mumbles into his coffee, feeling cowardly. “Just life, the universe, and everything.”

“Forty-two. Everyone knows that one, Spence.” She shuffles around the files on her desk for a time and then looks over at him. “I know… I haven’t guessed in a while. I should do that.”

She makes it sound like it’s a casual game of cribbage – something to pass the time, something average and occasionally diverting – rather than what it really is.

“That is, if there’s any left for me to guess at,” she continues.

“There is.” But she won’t guess it. Even if it occurs to her, she’d never say it out loud, and he’ll never be able to show her. Suddenly the game seems depressing to him, even with her pledge to answer his questions when she guesses incorrectly.

“Okay,” she leans back in her chair and grins, pleased by the challenge. “Arms have been covered, legs have been ruled out, fingers, feet, neck, back – check, check, check, and check… are you sure you don’t have one on your ass?”

“Is that your final answer?” he cocks an eyebrow at her.

“No,” she smirks. Then an idea comes to her and she sits up. “Your chest. Left side, over your heart.”

She looks so pleased. She’s absolutely sure she’s right. He glances away from her. “No,” he says quietly.

“Really? I thought you’d have one there for sure. It seems like such an obvious spot…” She sounds really disappointed, and he supposes that’s something. “Well, I guess you’re up then. What are you gonna ask me?”

He’s had a running list of questions in his mind since she first offered this trade, but somehow, he’s not interested in any of them anymore. He flicks through them aimlessly and while he’s doing that, his mouth goes ahead and makes a choice for him.

“Do you harbor regrets?”

Her smile falls and she looks as if it’s the last thing she expects to hear. Perhaps it’s more philosophical than personal.

“I mean, everyone has them,” he clarifies. “But do you hold onto them, or let them go?”

She thinks for several minutes – really _thinks_ \- and he finds that response alone quite intriguing. Finally, she looks back at him.

“I think, for the most part, I try to let them go. But that’s not always possible, you know.”

He nods in agreement. After all, he’s incapable of forgetting anything. She wheels her chair a little closer and gives him a strange look. She’s sizing him up for something but he can’t tell what.

“Like, there was this time when I was young.” She pauses as her eyes flick away and back to his nervously, very unsure of herself. He wheels his chair closer as discreetly as possible – an unspoken ‘tell me, I’m listening’. “There was _a man_ … I regret him. To this day, I regret him.”

“Why?” he asks quietly. “What happened?”

“Nothing horrific,” she waves it away. “It was just first love, ya know? He broke my heart – that’s it. But I was twenty and he was much older, and married… honestly, he should’ve known better even if I didn’t. I was a hot mess afterwards. I made quite a scene. Remembering it all these years later still makes me cringe a little.”

“Emily…”

“No,” she points at him. “No pity. I was a silly girl and I had to grow up sometime. I just wish that my first love was someone I could look back on wistfully, not some philandering, selfish bastard that I’d sooner take out with a sniper rifle.”

Reid feels his eyebrows rocket upwards and it makes her laugh gently. She reaches for his hand and curls two fingers around one of his and lets them dangle between their chairs.

“Yeah, so, I guess regrets _and_ grudges – I keep a few.” She’s still laughing and he thinks it’s both sad and wonderful at the same time. “Honestly, I have the worst taste in men. That’s my biggest regret. And it means that I’ve never really had a shot at a family… not that I ever had the time for one…”

He swallows and curls his finger around hers. He wishes that he were braver in this moment, to offer something truly dangerous, but he’s far more skilled at nursing regrets than being brave.

“Thankfully,” she murmurs and waits for him to meet her eyes again. She’s smiling magically at him, as if none of her sadness counts because he’s there listening to her. “I have excellent taste in friends. A broad couldn’t do any better, really. It makes the rest of that mess meaningless.”

“You think so?”

“Oh yeah,” she nods vigorously. “My friends have been the making of me. Otherwise I’d still be that silly, spoiled diplomat’s daughter. But probably with a substantial drinking problem by this point and a dreadful credit rating.”

She’s laughing it off but he can’t make himself join in. He doesn’t fully buy into her dismissal of it all, and a large part of him wants to grasp her hand and tell her he wants to change her opinion about how men love.

“Hey, Spence,” she says quietly after her laughter fades, swinging their linked fingers between them. He looks up at her. “You know you’re my best friend, right? You _know that_ , don’t you?”

He blinks and swallows and has no clue what to say because – obviously – he _didn’t_ know that otherwise why would it produce such a profound state of selective paralysis? He’s looking at her with her perfect make-up and hair, her professionally demure outfit that reeks of expense, but all he sees is a girl with lop-sided pigtails and skinned knees waiting for him to tell her that they’ll pinky-swear their friendship forever. She wants to know that they’ll never break. It’s what he dreamed of as a child: just one true friend.

“Yes,” he chokes, and then steadies himself and tries again. “Yes, you’re my best friend as well, Emily.”

Her cheeks pink up and she grins. And it quietly blows his mind. 

Surely this is enough. It has to be. How could he ever hope for something better than this?


	14. Chapter 14

Emily will hate suspension bridges until the end of time.

The pedestrian walkway is too narrow for them to approach side-by-side and somehow – she doesn’t remember how – Reid is in front pointing his .38 at a cornered suspect who looks more like a Visigoth than an unstable account manager. Reid calls out to the guy calmly, his breath making clouds in the sharp January night air. The Visigoth doesn’t look all that concerned even though there’s nowhere for him to go now: it’s either their custody or the river below. In fact, the guy looks bored. That probably should’ve tipped her off.

It all happens so quickly. Reid steps forward, still talking and the Visigoth rushes him even though he’s unarmed. He dips and rams his shoulder into Reid’s stomach, knocking the wind from him, and then the guy lurches under Reid, lifts him, and effortlessly tosses him over the bridge railing into the darkness. Reid makes a distant ‘Whaa’ noise and then is gone. Emily just screams.

The Visigoth barrels towards her and she empties her clip into him. She doesn’t remember any of it – someone tells her later. She drops her gun, jumps over the dead suspect, and clasps at the railing looking over into the dark night water flowing rapidly three storeys below her. She can’t see a body, or anyone swimming against the current. She can’t see a goddamned thing. It’s too dark and the water is black, the shore is black, the woods beyond it are black. She screams his name and the echo of it returns to her from the trees around the winter river.

Could he survive the fall into water? How long can he be in it at this temperature? How fast is the water moving? How far downstream do they need to search? All she can think is that _Reid would know._ She yanks her phone from her coat pocket.

“Fuck! FUCK! Spencer!” she screams into the night, willing her eyes to spot _something_ as she waits for Hotch to answer his phone. Somewhere below her his lungs are filling with water cold enough to put him into shock. His blood vessels are constricting, his responses are becoming sluggish, if he’s responding at all. Somewhere under that dark water her friend is dying.

She feels sick, useless, trapped on this damned bridge. It took them nearly ten minutes to climb up this high, and it’ll take longer to climb down to the banks of the rushing waters below. She keeps yelling his name into the night because it’s all she can do, pacing, listening for the EMT sirens, wishing the suspect was still alive so she could kill him again and feel like she is _doing_ something. 

She hears the last sound he made over and over in her head. It wasn’t even a word, just… surprise. That something fragile and pure he embodied was flipped over a railing without a thought. How does it all end THIS CASUALLY? She screams his name until she’s hoarse, until Hotch wraps her in a blanket and tells her to stop, just stop, Emily. Her face hurts and she realizes she’s been crying and it’s frozen down her face like little razorblades.

He’s gone and she’s worthless, huddled in her blanket at the railing’s edge looking down into the darkness. She wishes that the Visigoth had tossed her into the river too.


	15. Chapter 15

He died. For about two minutes. 

They find him nearly a quarter mile down river, half pulled up onto the frozen shore, crystalline blue and not breathing at all. The EMTs pump the water out of him, and air back in, and then bundle him into a revving ambulance that doesn’t wait for her. Somewhere between the shoreline and the ER is when the dying happens. His heart just _stops_ and the EMTs are pounding on his chest as they pull into the ambulance bay, or so she is told. The ER doctors shock his heart back into rhythm, but it’s a near thing. If the ambulance driver had taken a wrong turn somewhere… well, she decides to buy that guy the most expensive variation of whatever vice he indulges in, with gratitude. Then it’s twelve hours of watching him slowly defrost like a steak and listening to doctors say alarming things with just-another-Wednesday-evening looks on their faces. It makes her want to shoot them. Good thing she’s out of bullets at the moment.

She watches him sleep swathed in the thin, cotton hospital sheets and still looking far too pale to be comforting. The only thing that soothes her is the steady bloop-bloop of the heart monitor beside his bed that tells her _he’s alive_ with mechanized authority she doesn’t choose to question. The team comes and goes but she remains fixed in that room. Hotch rumbles that she should go home at hour nine, because Reid is going to be there for a few days at the very least, but she can’t take her eyes off him. She can’t take that risk.

He was dead. It’s the second time she’s seen it happen to him. But this is the first time that it threatens to end her as well.

She thinks about standing over his grave with J.J. and Garcia, Hotch, Morgan, and Rossi. She imagines seeing the casket lowered into the ground and being overruled by panic that she never told him everything she meant to. She knows now that the game they’ve been playing for months was by design – _his_ design – to bring them closer. She understands his motivations, the loneliness he’s carried since childhood and the craving for trust and kindness with another. But she’s not certain if he really grasps how this has affected her. She’s always been lonely too, just in a subtler fashion. Offering himself to her in the manner he has moved her in unexpected ways. Now she knows without a doubt that he’s the closest companion she’s ever had, but that warm ease has gone further, turned into something intimate that she never anticipated. And watching him being tossed into an icy river in rural Virginia has cemented that fact in her chest, and she has no idea what to do with it now.

The spurts of adrenaline that have kept her going throughout the night dry up and she starts to resemble a slow-blinking zombie hunched in a chair at his bedside. She decides to make a break for the cafeteria and coffee that doesn’t come out of a vending machine, and when she returns forty-five minutes later he’s gone and the adrenaline returns with a fiery vengeance. She captures a nurse in the hallway outside his room and demands answers.

“Oh, _that_ guy,” the nurse huffs. “He checked himself out.”

“What? How is that even allowed? He has a concussion, for fuck’s sake! Twelve hours ago he almost DIED!”

The nurse seems concerned that she’s being blamed for something and gets defensive. “I have three letters for you, dear: A.M.A. It’s the God-given, American right to think you know better than trained professionals. He exercised his entitlement to be stupid. It’s out of our hands now. I think I saw him heading for the parking lot.”

“Fuck!”

Emily races through the hospital corridors, gets turned around a few times, and then finally finds a way out that’s at the opposite end of the parking lot. She scans the grim, windswept expanse of abandoned cars and then finally spots his dumb ass in teal scrubs loping towards the bus stop with stubborn determination. Thank god for his stupid hair that sticks out for miles… She sprints across the lot after him, hitting a few ice patches and pulling some Charlie Chaplin-esque moves to stay upright, and finally yells at him like he’s an armed suspect she’s about to take down. He turns and looks completely shocked to see her barreling towards him with a murderous expression on her face.

“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!?” she yells when she catches up to him.

He blinks and points to the bus stop like it’s obvious. “Going home.”

“You need to be in bed!”

“And I will be. When I get home.”

She growls loudly in frustration. “Your heart stopped. You have a contrecoup concussion from hitting the water. That means you have to-”

“I’m perfectly aware of my condition and what it means. Possibly better than you,” he snaps, and then winces as if it hurt.

“Hey! Don’t act as if I’m the one being an asshole here,” she snaps back before she can stop herself. Her heart is pounding so hard that she feels like she should be physically pulsing in front of him. “You almost died, Spence. Just… fuck, gimme a break already…”

His body sags and he looks wan and exhausted, like he’ll drop down on the icy sidewalk and sleep there.

“I know. Sorry,” he chokes out softly and looks away. “I just wanna go home though.”

 _Christ._ She glares at him for a moment, tangled and pale in ill-fitting scrubs and a muddy winter coat that looks like it’s still half-soaked. He’s probably starting to freeze again, and she can’t get over how someone so smart can be this stupid.

“Fine,” she grits out and yanks him away from the bus shelter. Her hand makes a squelching noise. His coat is definitely still waterlogged. “But you’re not taking the bus. We’re an hour and a half outside of D.C., you idiot, and you seem to be dressed in a wet sponge. You’ll fucking die on the bus…”

He follows her to the parking lot without a word, and then shuffles ahead of her when he spots her car. She watches his stooped shoulders, his tangled hair, thinks about the sound he made as he disappeared into the frozen night, imagines lowering him into the ground in a box, pictures how empty her life would be without him at the desk next to her…

“Listen,” she calls out, and he turns to face her. “I just have to do this, okay?”

She grabs the collar of his ruined coat and pulls him in for a kiss. He goes still for a split second, making a shocked noise, and then his hand flashes to hers holding him. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t fight it, and doesn’t try to loosen her grip on him. His mouth softens against hers, she pushes to get more of him, and he lets her. She doesn’t know exactly what she expected to happen, but she’s surprised. She had to do this for herself – it was building into something beyond her control and she needed to calm the hell down a little. But she anticipated awkwardness and consequences that she’d have to repair later. Not this tentative mutual searching, not the gentle give and take of them against each other and his nervous breath warm on her skin. She finally pulls away with a slow drag of her mouth and he’s as flushed as she feels, gaze wide and worried. He leans towards her as she pulls away, like he wants to do it again, but stops short just inches from her lips, blinking as if he’s not sure what’s happening is real. And her stomach flutters. And her breath comes short as she stares at the deep blue-purple smudges around his eyes and the sharp cheekbones. And she thinks maybe she doesn’t have uniformly bad taste in men after all. _Oh._

He just watches, waiting for something to happen. An apology is on her lips but she swallows it back. She shuffles behind her armor instead, a little resentful that it’s her first impulse but reminding herself that it’s been quite the twenty-four hours and neither of them is at their best.

“Get in the damned car,” she says breathlessly.

“Okay.” He nods and acts with the calm of a man who expects to wake to reality at any moment.

She takes her time circling around to the driver’s side, trying to figure out what happens _next._


	16. Chapter 16

She kissed him.

 

KISSED HIM.

 

It just lives in his brain eating up all the space and rationality he possesses the entire drive back to his apartment.

Maybe it’s just something that happens between friends when they get a real scare. Although he can’t picture J.J. or Morgan or Hotch planting one on him in similar circumstances. For an instant, he thought he was hallucinating – he thought about walking back into the hospital and asking for a CAT scan. But it wasn’t like his dream. He could _feel_ her. The clutch of her fingers in his collar, the brush of her nose when she adjusted her angle, the soft crease at the corner of her mouth when he gave her more, the surprised huff she made when they broke apart… He almost went too far, wanting to pull her in again, pull her against him, give himself away entirely, but his head throbbed in warning and his stomach lurched. He wasn’t well and he knew it. The anxiety of that moment could have produced something unfortunate, so he erred on the side of caution. Plus, you know… maybe it didn’t mean what he _thought_ it meant. That was possible as well.

They reach his apartment and she walks him to his place, but he’s no clearer on what it all means. He unlocks the front door and she lets herself in without waiting for an invitation. He stands in the living room, still in his soggy coat, as she bustles around his kitchen looking for something.

“What are you doing?” he asks weakly. It’s the first thing he’s said in almost two hours.

“Looking for food. You need to eat something.”

“Oh, ah… I-I don’t think I could…”

“Spencer,” Her voice says she isn’t having any of his nonsense. “Take off that wet thing, get into something warm and sit your ass down. You’re eating something, and that’s final.”

She’s glaring at him from the kitchen, and the look doesn’t have any of the things he thought he saw when she kissed him. He’s completely mistaken about what is happening now, and he’s just intimidated enough by her stare that he starts to sit down when he remembers that she told him to get changed first. He ducks his eyes and wanders off quickly to do that before she gets any angrier.

He shucks his clothes off and starts to shiver almost immediately. The coat had been a bad idea. He pulls out his only set of flannel pajamas because he just wants to feel warm again, but then balks when he realizes that they are covered in day-glo, dancing caffeine molecules and he’s worried about Emily seeing him in them. _Not flattering._ And then he worries about worrying about it because she’s angry with him and not something else so why should he fret over clothing decisions when he’s nauseated and cold and in his own apartment and in zero danger of being kissed again?

He puts on the molecules.

“Oh, my god,” she laughs as she brings two bowls of soup into the living room where’s he’s curled himself on the couch like a miserable cat. “What are you wearing?”

“They’re warm,” he pouts, unable to look her in the eye.

“They are fabulously ridiculous.”

“I have no idea what the combination of those two words means.” 

He slurps his soup and, after a moment of gastrointestinal revolt, feels the warmth of it spread out over him with soothing relief. He eats the whole bowl within minutes, and then Emily pushes the rest of hers at him with a smile. The smile warms him as much as the soup does. At least she isn’t angry anymore. 

“See? You were hungry,” she says gently. “I bet you’re tired as well. You really should’ve stayed at the hospital, Spence.”

“All I need is rest. I can do that much more effectively here than in a place with metal toilets, assless pajamas, and the looming threat of superbugs.”

“Assless pajamas…” she cackles, making him crack a smile for the first time. “But there’s also the nearly dying thing, and the potentially slipping into a coma thing…”

“I’m not gonna slip into a coma,” he huffs.

“Well, that’s the plan, and why I’m staying here with you.”

He looks up at her and blinks.

“You can blink at me all you want, Spencer, but you need someone around for the next day or so in case your symptoms get worse, and that’s what I’m gonna do. Coma watch.”

“That’s not… that’s not necess-”

“Save it, genius.” She holds up her hand to stop him. “I’m not leaving. Except possibly to get some food. How can you live off of gourmet coffee and Pop Tarts alone?”

She’s _staying here?_ What will they do? Where will she sleep? She’s going to have the time and opportunity to go through all the stuff he doesn’t want anyone to see… This could ruin everything. His carefully constructed plan to cultivate her friendship… all it’ll take is seeing his anime collection or his Doctor Who costume in his closet to torpedo all of that. He starts to panic.

“Spencer.” She leans forward and places a hand lightly on his leg. Her expression is softer than it was before, and a lot more tired than he thought. “Let me do this, okay? I almost lost you last night.”

She swallows around that phrase, and her expression cracks into something that almost looks desperate to him. He sits up straighter, his attention honed in on her, his hand landing over hers.

“You need to take better care of yourself,” she croaks and then looks away, pulling her hand back and busying herself with the used soup bowls. “I know you didn’t mean to get thrown off a bridge, but… you can’t ask me to be… close to you and then go out into the world and die on me.”

His heart seizes in his chest so sharply that he has to gasp a little around the pain of it. Her voice is wet, fighting for control, giving her away even though he can’t see her face. Maybe the kiss meant exactly what he thought it did. But how was that possible? He doesn’t think, just reaches out and grabs one of her wrists until she places the bowl she’s holding down and half turns back to him. He leans up on his knees, presses close enough to her that she can probably feel the warmth of him next to her.

“Emily,” he murmurs, and she looks over her shoulder at him, eyes huge. “I’m sorry I made you angry.”

“I wasn’t angry. I was scared.”

He swallows hard and then abdicates intellectual responsibility for what he does next. He crowds against her, his chest along her back, and then he releases her wrist and drifts his hand up to cup her jaw. Her breath comes out in a gasp but her eyes slip closed, and his heart rockets around inside his rib cage to see the reaction.

_You kissed me. It means something. I didn’t make it up._

He leans his forehead against hers and breathes roughly, fingers stroking her cheek. Possession cracks inside him and spills out everywhere, incendiary and lightning-fast. He wants her – it’s not friendly at all. It’s powerful and unrealistic, but she hasn’t pulled away, hasn’t asked him what he’s doing, hasn’t told him he’s mistaken yet. He wants to kiss her again, wants to know what it would feel like if they both chose to do it. But he’s breathing too fast and he’s getting dizzy, and then the dizziness turns to swirling and his entire body tells him he’s not well enough for this level of uncertainty.

“Can’t… catch… my breath…”

“Lie back,” she says quickly, and he can feel her moving, her hands supporting his head as he collapses back along the length of the couch. His vision gets pale and hot for a while, and then the familiarity of his living room comes back into focus. “Dumbass,” she mumbles quietly. Her hands are stroking his hair.

“Thanks,” he wheezes.

“For what?”

“For staying. For taking care of me,” he breathes. “For being scared.”

He hears her let out a long, stuttered sigh, and then her hair tickles him when her lips brush his forehead. “Jesus, Spencer…”

He smiles. “Don’t diss Pop Tarts. They are amazing.”

She laughs. “Well, yeah, but they don’t belong to a single, official food group, so I have to go shopping, ‘mmmkay?”

He doesn’t know how their conversation ends. He falls asleep before that happens.


	17. Chapter 17

He’s convinced her to try watching _Doctor Who_. He’s in heaven. 

It’s Day Two of Coma Watch (but he feels fine, really, just tired) and they’ve worked out some of the things that initially made him panic. She’s sleeping in his bed and he’s made a nest of blankets and pillows on the couch. She cooks breakfast and lunch, but he’s paying for take-out dinners. She’s agreed not to snoop, though the cat’s already out of the bag with the molecule jammies.

Anyway, there was a discussion about tv and he suggested _Doctor Who_ while looking sickly and pitiful, and she sorta rolled her eyes at him and didn’t object when he popped off the sofa like a much healthier man and began cuing up the premier episode of the Tenth Doctor while rapidly explaining any backstory she might need. She’s already admitted to watching some Tom Baker episodes on PBS as a kid, so he thinks this is all going to go _really well._

“Ten’s a good one. No one hates Ten. He’s a gateway Doctor for new fans – pretty much everyone agrees on that,” he babbles excitedly as he curls under the blankets on his side of the couch. When he glances over at her, she’s smiling at him, feet tucked up under her, in jeans and a grey top he’s momentarily forgotten is terribly distracting due to his _Doctor Who_ fanboy gush.

“Yer cute,” she smirks. “For a giant nerd.”

“Uh, thank you, I think? And thanks for indulging the nerd.”

They’re two episodes in when she murmurs, “You know, for a dude who can go anywhere in time and space, the Doctor sure seems stuck on modern day London, doesn’t he?” He glances over at her.

“Don’t pull on that thread. My entire fantasy world will collapse on me.”

She tosses her head back against the sofa and laughs, her throat moving in a long line down to the collar of her befuddling shirt. “So, I guess that means I’m not allowed to profile the disturbing psychological implications of his dependent ‘companion’ paradigm, given his age, possible gender fluidity, and the obvious way the writers are trying to foster something between him and Rose?”

He marshals an expression of extreme heartbreak. “Why are you taking an axe to this branch we’re currently sitting on?”

She laughs so gleefully that it makes his whole body tingle. He never imagined that she’d be so indulgent or that they’d both enjoy it so much. He’s becoming addicted to this: the comfortable intimacy of two. It’s only been a couple of days, and he already craves it. It won’t last, of course. He’s feeling much better and plans to return to work in the next day or so, and he doesn’t know how he’ll find an excuse to maintain this contact. Unless he stirs his courage and just admits to her that _this_ is what he wants them to be now. She glances at him as her laughter dies down, but doesn’t see any of this in him. Perhaps he should be thankful. Pining is familiar and he can almost handle it. Almost.

“All right. I’ll be good and stop poking holes in the tissue of your universe.”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that,” he huffs as he tries to arrange himself on the end of the couch in a way that doesn’t cause circulation issues. She watches him fidget for a while.

“Why don’t you stretch out?” she asks quietly. He looks at her and her eyes dart away and back.

“Well… I’m long,” he says.

“I’ve noticed.” The corner of her mouth curls but she keeps her eyes on the tv.

“What I mean is, I usually take up the whole couch. I’d be all over the place.”

She shrugs, eyes still glued to the tv. “I don’t mind.”

His pulse booms for a hot second. There’s no way for him to do this without part of him ending up on her. Does she understand that?

“C’mon,” she chirps and then glances at him like it’s nothing. “Hand me that pillow.”

He passes it over, and she plumps it into shape before placing it on her lap. Then she taps it lightly without looking at him. He just stares and continues to swallow past the BOOM, BOOM, BOOM in his throat. He hasn’t even tried to touch her since the moment he went all mammalian on her and then almost ungraciously passed out. He’s not sure he wants to try again if humiliation is the inevitable result. But his pillow beckons on her lap, and the mammal in him wants to curl up next to her, on her, around her, and he finds himself slinking closer before he can decide if it’s wise or not. He shuffles around for a bit, giving her time to suggest something or change her mind, but she looks completely captivated by the show, and he chooses to take a breath and dive in. 

He lays down, head gently sinking into the pillow as he readjusts the blankets. Once he’s settled, eyes facing the tv without seeing anything, he realizes he can’t relax. His muscles are locked up, his breathing is shallow, and he’s starting to swirl again.

“Jeez, Spence. You’re stiff as a board.”

“Sorry, sorry… I can move…”

“Shhhhh,” Her hand lands on his shoulder and stills him. “At the risk of possibly nuking canon here, I don’t get the police box thing. I think you need to explain it to me. I mean, they don’t even have police boxes in London anymore, do they? It’s not very camouflage-y… it’s fucking blue for chrissakes… ” 

“Umm, well…” he stumbles as her hand strokes lightly along his shoulder. “I think this is an i-instance of fandom meta invading the s-suspension of disbelief necessitated by this type of narrative…”

“Go on,” she murmurs, and he does at great length. When he finally reaches a natural stopping point, the episode is almost over and his body has relaxed to a point where he might start to doubt he has bones. Her hand has long since abandoned his shoulder and is now stroking through his hair, brushing it back from his temple and forehead in long, slow pulls. His breathing has become long as well. He feels warm and liquid everywhere, and that animal pull rises once more, but this time slowly, like a tide, wanting her and _this_ completely for his own.

She stays quiet when he stops talking and he turns in her lap to glance up and see if she’s really into the show or not. But she’s watching him instead, gaze soft and still, almost as liquid as he feels. He wants to say something but is at a loss, so he waits to see what she’ll do next. She doesn’t say a word. She watches and cards her fingers through his hair over and over and over until it feels like mutual mesmerism. _God, Emily, I want more of this…_

He wants to say, _Something is happening here. We are changing._ He tries to open his mouth and make the words tumble out.

_I want you._

_Please, if I’m wrong… you have to say something._

_I’m so scared, Emily. Scared of losing what we already have._

Nothing happens. His mouth remains firmly shut. But then, she reacts anyway.

She leans a little closer to him, eyes changing to something worried and barely restrained as well.

_I’m scared too._

His breath leaves him in a huge gust and he feels his cheeks get hot. He’s blinking too much and doesn’t know what to do. But her fingers keep stroking, stroking… His eyes slip closed as he sinks into that comfort to calm himself. When he opens them again, they just stare at each other ignoring the banter from the tv and the fading daylight. He thought he was in heaven before, but lying wordlessly under her hands, in this gloaming of _something strange_ , feels like more delight than he can bear.


	18. Chapter 18

He returns to work and she returns to her apartment. He finds himself lonely in the one place that’s always been a haven from the world. It only took her four days to change something that’s worked for him for nearly a decade. They slip back into their friendship dynamic at work like the bridge incident never happened, and he begins to wonder if he’s hallucinated the whole thing. But then the team gets a case and because he’s not cleared to fly yet, they all wing off to Kentucky without him. That just makes him lonelier because he can’t even see her at work, and his miserable pouting reaches a whole new level while he tries to convince himself that this _isn’t_ just like Simone all over again and surely, he must have gained some emotional maturity since he was seventeen.

It’s just… there was something there, he was sure of it. She was upset by his near-death adventure, she took care of him, she was strident about his isolation and indulgent of his weirdness – she even sat through a tremendous amount of British sci-fi without complaint. And she kissed him. She seemed… interested. But they’d spent the rest of his sick leave being close, not intimate, and then it was back to the real world. He felt like he’d blown it without knowing how or when. The thing of it is: four cozy days in his apartment wasn’t normal. It was an aberration. Their jobs were real, and horrific, and incredibly serious with no space for cozy or close or _something more._ Perhaps she’d come to her senses about that when she’d gone home and he’s too desperate for intimacy to make a similar realization. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman found him offputtingly eager.

He’s almost talked himself out of the whole thing when he gets home and finds a half-finished bag of wasabi peas in his kitchen that she forgot to take when she left. He’ll never eat them but he tucks them up into a cupboard _for when she comes back._ And then he sags against the countertop, recognizes the obvious, and picks up his phone.

**Reid: How are things going?**

It isn’t eager at all, just friendly, but the way he stares at his phone waiting for an answer is the exact opposite. And she doesn’t text him back. He goes to bed and tries not to feel a single thing.

The next day he talks to her during a conference call with all of them onsite, but they are both in professional mode and he might as well be talking to a random field agent for all the personality he’s getting across the line. Everyone sounds tired. Garcia tells him after they hang up that Morgan said they haven’t slept in forty hours. Then he feels bad for being needy when he gets to go home after ten hours and sleep in his own place. Even so, he tries again.

**Reid: You okay? Garcia says you guys are burning it at both ends on this one.**

Again, he goes to bed without a response.

He forces himself to wait eighteen hours before sending another message, although he’s distracted the entire time and has to re-do several reports when he discovers some glaring errors and omissions as a result of his fretting. It’s getting stupid now.

**Reid: Can I help? I don’t have a lot on my plate and you know I don’t sleep much.**

Nothing.

Fine. Message received. He won’t try anymore. He won’t make a public display of how pathetic he is. It won’t be Simone again – no one will ever know this time. He’ll re-learn how to be content on his own, in his own skin. It was nice while it lasted.

It’s 2:45 am when his phone chirps and bounces across the bedside table. He slaps at it, throws it on the floor by accident, and then leaps for it landing with a loud thud as both he and it skitter across the hardwood.

“ ‘llo?” he gusts, hoping that he’s talking into the right end. He can’t see a damned thing in the dark, half asleep, and without his glasses.

“… Spence?”

He’s sure she must hear his sigh over the line. “Hello, hi, yes.”

“Are you awake? You don’t sound awake.”

“No, I’m not. Well, I suppose that’s not true. I’m speaking to you and speaking requires a certain amount of sensibility. And I hit the floor pretty hard. That was invigorating…”

“You hit _the floor?_ ”

“Yes, but I’m fine. How are you?”

“I’m sorry I called so late. I didn’t think.”

“It’s fine, Emily. I’m glad you called. How are you doing? How’s the case?” He’s fighting to sound normal. NOT eager. NOT confused. NOT incredibly relieved.

She sighs deeply across the phone. “It’s over. We made an arrest an hour ago.”

He waits. She doesn’t sound okay. “Emily…”

“I’ve missed you.” Her voice is small as she says it, like a scared child. He sort of skips over that fact as his heart rams itself against his ribs trying to make a break for freedom. Then she snuffs out all of that when she says, “And that’s a problem.”

It hurts. The word ‘problem’ actually feels like it just punched him in the face. “Why is that?” he murmurs once he can manage it safely.

“Because,” she sighs again. “I’m supposed to be here catching a murderer – that’s my _job_ – but my brain keeps skipping back to you. Your apartment, your thoughts, your disastrous taste in sleepwear… Unless I focus every ounce of my energy on the task at hand, I slip, and when I slip things get missed. It isn’t okay. And then you keep texting-”

“I-I’m sorry-”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” She sounds angry. “There’s nothing wrong with your messages other than they remind me that you’re _not here_ and that I’m trying not to think about it, and then I have to push you out of my mind again. It’s stupid and exhausting. The whole thing is stupid!”

He doesn’t have a response for that. It feels like she’s calling _him_ stupid. He knocks his head back into the floor he’s lying on, listening to her rail against everything he wants to have.

“It’s just…” she continues after a full minute of silence between them. “The job is real. It’s the majority of my life. It has been forever. Being a homebody, hiding from the world… whatever _this is_ … isn’t. But it’s messing me up.”

He wants to say he’s sorry, but he isn’t. And he couldn’t say a damned word right now without his heart cracking and leaking out from his lips, so he just clamps his mouth shut and blinks away the blurriness that has nothing to do with his lack of glasses. He lies there and stares at the shadows on his ceiling and the silence over the phone stretches on and on.

“Spencer…” When she tries again, her voice has lost its edge and she sounds scared again. “I know you set out to do this. You wanted us to connect more, connect better… and it’s a beautiful notion. There’s nothing wrong with either it or you.” She sighs. “I just don’t think I’m any good at it. I don’t think I’m the friend you expect me to be.”

“I see,” he whispers.

“Seeing you thrown over that bridge…” Her voice chokes off for a second and then she’s back. “It did something. Changed the way I see you, maybe. But it’s too much – I don’t know what to do with all of it. I’m pretty sure you’d prefer me NOT to be a screw up about this, so that’s why I didn’t respond to your messages and I didn’t call until now. I just want to be who I’ve always been and not constantly imagining something else that probably isn’t realistic in the first place. I mean, I’ve camped out on friends’ sofas in the past – this has never happened before.”

His hand tightens around his phone as he stirs himself to say what he must, no matter how she decides to take it.

“Sure, I get it,” he murmurs. “But, Emily?”

“Yeah?”

“I missed you too.”

There’s a wet exhalation over the phone followed by a soft, “Fuck.”

He takes a deep breath. “Just stay with me tonight… like this. I won’t try to convince you of anything. You don’t even need to talk. Just stay on the phone with me because I’ve been waiting all week to hear you again.”

“Spence… _christ_ …” It’s the softest curse he’s ever heard. But she doesn’t hang up.

They don’t speak and eventually he falls asleep. When he wakes the next morning, cold and stiff from having slept on the floor, he checks his phone. The log says that she stayed on the line for two and a half hours before disconnecting the call. The gawky, quiet kid beneath the man he’s become sees it and whispers, _don’t give up._


	19. Chapter 19

That night on the phone with him… She tries to do the right thing and stir herself from the daydream she’s having about Spencer Fucking Reid. The gentle guy who is inked up and death-defying, and has also been her pal since Day One at the FBI. What she’s suddenly thinking and feeling isn’t right, and she just wants to put a stop to it before it gets any more out of hand. It isn’t his fault, but she knows he’ll take it as a rejection of the friendship he’s offered her. She wants to do an end run around that: keep the friendship, lose the confusing emotional entanglement.

But then he says he misses her and his voice is soft and broken around the words, just like she feels. God _dammit._ And then he convinces her to stay on the line with him, and he refuses to talk for once, and all she can do is hear him breathe, and she tells herself, _fuck it, enjoy the moment – he doesn’t have to know._

She lays on her hotel bed and imagines him. Or, more accurately, she imagines being wherever he is (on the floor?). She feels her elbows complain as she props herself up and watches him. She imagines her hand reaching out, fingers trailing through his hair drawing it away from his eyes. She pictures him watching her in silence as she traces the lines of his face with hesitant fingertips – temple, cheekbone, jawline. In her mind, he just stares, eyes wide and liquid in the darkness, as her fingers move over him – never objecting, but not engaging either. Her hands skirt his mouth – the one she’s only kissed once – and trail down his neck, over his Adam’s apple, down to the divot between his collarbones. Here her fantasy turns as she circles the delicate skin lightly until it goosepimples under her touch, and then she slowly lowers her lips to the same spot, breathing him in, tasting his warmth, imagining the faint echo of a rapid pulse against her lips. And in that moment, lying alone above the crisp covers of the turned down bed, she wants that fantasy more than oxygen.

It isn’t right. It just _isn’t._ She’d listened to his story about his first love and knows that she isn’t being fair to him. She can’t use him for this when he’s offered her something purer, something that he wants to endure between them. Attraction will just fuck everything up. The friendship he wants could be one for a lifetime – something incredible that others will envy. Why did she have to screw it up by making it sexual? She is such a broken toy.

So, she indulges in it that night on the phone until her battery dies and cuts them off, and then she comes home determined to make the amazing friendship thing a reality without having him jump through any more hoops to get it. He’s done enough already – she’s in. She just has to get her emotionally frustrated head out of her ass and _deal._

She shows up at work the following Monday with a game plan – an intimately-neutered, platonically-splendid game plan. She can do this. She’s a grown-up. She’s ruthlessly focused on it as she watches the elevator doors close and hears, “Hold the elevator!” She does, and the contraption beeps angrily as Reid slides in and pulls up shocked when he sees her. And then an amazing grin breaks out over his face. Her heart thuds painfully and she tells it to _cool it_.

“Morning,” he says. “Glad you’re back.”

 _Don’t, don’t don’t… c’mon, girl, pull yourself together._ “Me too,” she huffs. “Kentucky was a drag.”

“I’ll bet it was.” His grin fades into a look of knowing sympathy. Then he adds, “I wish I could’ve helped you more.”

 _Her, not the team… STOP. IT._ She shrugs it off as the doors close and she looks to the number pad instead. “Heading to the Counterterrorism meeting on nineteen?”

“Yeah. It’s not really my thing, but Hotch thinks I might be useful, so…” he mumbles. “You too?”

She nods, watching the floor numbers light up overhead.

“Yep. It really says something about the state of your career when you start looking forward to things like counterterrorism assignments because they are easier than your daily grind.”

He chuckles beside her as the elevator stops at the fourth floor. The doors slide open and an entire unit of DCPD SWAT lumbers in – including guns, body armor, and other ridiculousness – and smooshes them to the back wall of the cab to make room. 

“Everyone going to nineteen?” The SWAT leader calls out. “Great.”

But the elevator stops at every damned floor for some reason. They are painfully inching their way up and Emily thinks that she could get out and scale the side of the building faster with a pair of toilet plungers. She’s about to murmur the thought to Reid when she feels a hand brush hers as she’s pressed into the back wall with a SWAT guy’s rifle butt in her face. She glances over and sees Reid staring back, similarly squashed by an enormous SWAT agent. She expects him to look panicked – he’s not good around a lot of strangers or in tight spaces – but there’s something else there instead. She feels fingers brush hers again and she knows it’s him even though she can’t look down to confirm it. It’s light and gentle, but in no way accidental, and that’s confirmed by his completely unguarded expression as he stares back at her. It reminds her of him lying in her lap during their _Doctor Who_ marathon when he seemed perfectly content to watch her stroking his hair until the end of time. She’d wanted to kiss him then, but didn’t. And, of course, she can’t do that now in a government elevator rammed full of masculinity like a stupid clown car. Not that she would because she’s being a grown-up about this. The SWAT guys are fidgeting and joking about the slowness of the elevator. They are indifferent to the two feebs they are crushing – it’s like they’ve forgotten they are there. Emily mouths _Are you okay?_ to Reid. His expression doesn’t change, but his fingers gently outline her hand, and then curl around it.

She holds her breath, feeling the beginnings of an uncontrollable blush blooming across her cheeks. She holds his gaze and his eyes never look away from her, never get distracted by the SWAT guys’ conversation or the start-stop stutter of the elevator at each floor. His hand keeps tracing hers in light, tickling paths, outlining her fingers, curling around and mapping the skin of her palm, running ellipses around her wrist. There’s no mistaking the intimacy of it, the wordless eroticism of the exploration. She’s breathing shallowly through her mouth, trying to keep it subdued, and her skin’s heating up, her palms getting sticky. She wants to tell him ‘no’ with her eyes. She wants to assure him that she’s working on being appropriate with him again. But then his fingers push and slide between hers, warm and tight as his thumb circles over her again and again. All she can do is swallow around the wave of want that rolls through her because she isn’t thinking about just his fingers now. He’s turned her on with a glance and _one hand_ in a crowded elevator; it’s not like either of them. It doesn’t feel very noble, but she knows that if they were alone in this contraption she’d be all over him, friendship and security cameras be damned. How did this happen?

 _We can’t_ , she feels like saying. _It won’t work. I’ll just fuck it up. There’s a reason why I’m single._ But she can do friendship – she can rock that. She’ll just become an old lady living with a cat who has a ton of amazing friends. And he’ll be one of them. That’s how this has to play out.

His grip tightens. A blush of his own has risen in his face while she watches. His pupils are huge. Then he sees something in her expression that captures him; he licks his lips and slides fractionally closer. It’s all he can manage with two hundred pounds of SWAT guy pressed against him, but to her it’s like he’s storming across a room at her. She lets out a surprised huff she’s sure everyone in the elevator can hear, and then her fingers curl around his until they tingle. _Fuck, what am I gonna do with you?_

And they stay like that, bound up and staring each other down as if they were alone, for the next twelve floors.

The elevator arrives at nineteen with a cheer from the SWAT agents, and everyone shuffles out with a sigh and a welcome blast of air conditioning. His hand slides away from hers as they exit, following the lumbering cops to the counterterrorism conference room. They are both looking forward, and she’s trying to mentally wrestle herself into a work headspace and away from his eyes and hands. But she quickly glances sideways and sees the remains of his fading blush making him seem more vivid, and realizes that she can’t talk herself out of this one if he won’t cooperate. 

So, she’ll have to test his boundaries and see just how much he’s willing to risk for something that’s almost certainly impossible.


	20. Chapter 20

It’s 3 am – the witching hour – and she can’t sleep. She’s typed out half a dozen texts and deleted them all before she has a chance to send them. She gets angry and decides, _fuck it._ Twenty minutes later she’s in the hallway of his building, knocking softly on his door and unsure if she wants him to be awake enough to hear it or not.

The door swings open on his blinking, tangled self and she’s a little disappointed that his pajamas are so mundane. She was hoping for flying dinosaurs or something.

“Em’ly,” he mumbles. He doesn’t look entirely awake but he isn’t wholly asleep either. There’s an alertness under the drowsiness when he stares at her.

“How many more tattoos do you have that I haven’t seen.” She dives right in, heart hammering in her chest. She has _a plan._

He swallows once, and now he’s fully awake. “Just one,” he murmurs.

“Show it to me,” she pushes past him and into the darkened apartment. “Now.”

“Oh, uh…” He closes the door and the room is instantly blue-grey from the streetlights streaming in through his front window. “I… I don’t think I should.”

“I don’t want to guess anymore,” she turns to face him, or the shadow of him. “It’s no longer a game. Don’t you see?”

“I do see that,” he says quietly after a moment, and then steps around her towards the couch in his living room. She follows without thinking, like they’re tied together with string and she has no choice. “But I still don’t think I can show you the tattoo,” he finishes.

“Why? Is it in a… personal place?”

He nods as he faces her, close enough to see detail but still at a respectful distance.

“Spencer,” she steps forward until she can consider his eyes. “You want me to know you. That’s what this has all been about.”

“Yes.” It’s barely a whisper.

“Then show me.”

He shakes his head but it also looks like he’s fighting with his decision. “It’s… it’s a hard one. What it means… you won’t like it.”

She detaches from the scene for a moment and really observes him. He’s afraid that she won’t like _him_ when she sees it. Suddenly, this instant has become the boundary she’s been looking for. She didn’t know how she would force him to choose – friendship or something more – but it’s suddenly manifested and this is it. She lays a palm lightly over his chest, just below his heart. Its muted patter almost matches hers and she’s _right back_ in the frightening confusion of the moment with him.

“Show me.”

A breath bursts out of him in a rush and he twists his gaze to the ceiling. She can see his grimace even in the shadows, the way it’s pinching his eyes and curling his mouth down: he doesn’t want to do this, not even for her. He grumbles something unintelligible and vicious, and she takes a step backwards at the shock of it. He’s rarely violent in any way, and her heart stutters and sinks. _Shit. Guess that answers that…_

Then he roughly yanks his t-shirt over his head and angrily tosses it away. She holds her breath, not sure what to think. He hooks his fingers into the waist of his loose sleeping pants and hesitates, not looking at her. His face creases even more, giving him lines she’s seldom seen, and then he shakes his head at himself and shrugs the pants down to pool at his feet. He’s wearing boxer briefs that leave little to the imagination, but on his right thigh just below the briefs’ hem she can see the black of the ink curling around his inner leg. His hand reaches down and pulls the hem away from the mark as much as the fabric will allow and she cautiously leans closer to look. It covers almost all his upper, inner thigh – part of it hopelessly obscured by his underwear. The only way to see it completely would be if he were naked.

“Is that… a snake?” It doesn’t seem like him at all.

“An ouroboros,” he sighs. “An ancient symbol of a snake eating its tail.”

Wait… she knows this one. It is a symbol of immortality, an endless cycle of birth and death, of knowledge and release. It doesn’t seem bad at all.

“It’s about… wholeness, perfection… isn’t it?” she asks.

“That’s one interpretation, yes,” he breathes. “But mine is different. For me, this is about addiction.”

She looks up and finds him staring at her with abject grief. It’s so surprising and replete that she does a double-take to be sure. She doesn’t understand – she’s really not getting this.

“I’m an addict, Emily,” he begins quietly. “Not just in the obvious way – but with everything that fascinates me. I become hyperfocused on something, and then I consume it without consideration. I do this even to the point of harming myself with it. It’s… the worst thing about me and often I can’t control it. I fixate, and that fixation feeds me and I it; it perpetuates itself in an ever-tightening spiral until I come close to disaster. I’ve been like this ever since I can remember. With learning, with degrees, with drugs…”

He stops abruptly.

“With people?” she guesses. He nods.

“It’s not normal and it scares people. I’ve always held myself at a distance because of it.” He gulps noticeably in the dark and then glances up at her. He looks like she’s moments away from telling him goodbye and walking out on him. “This is who I am, Emily. I can’t change it, and believe me when I say I’ve really tried.”

There’s a beat of silence between them. Perhaps he expects her to respond, but she can’t think of anything to say.

“It’s true: I wanted you to know me,” he continues. “I wanted to try moderating myself enough to be close to someone, after a fashion. It’s… it’s a lonely life sometimes.”

“Spencer-”

He holds up a hand to stop her. “It was going great there for a while. You have no idea how happy that made me. And then you seemed like… perhaps you wanted more?” He sighs and drops his hand. It makes a sharp slapping noise as it hits his side. “But you asked, and I won’t deny you the right to know this, even if it frightens you away. Just know that I get it, I understand _why._ As a child, I didn’t, but I know myself much better now. I know how this affects relationships.”

As clear as day she can imagine a young, gawky version of him desperately trying to connect with people, coming on too strong, and then retreating into himself with the bruises of rejection. And her heart tears at it, sharp and sudden behind her ribs. She can see the seventeen-year-old version of him joyful in his first love, and then having that ripped away as well, realizing, once again, his strangeness was an impediment to a true connection. Then she sees him grown up, as the man he is now, wary of touch, intensely private, startlingly loyal to his friends – and all in an effort to protect both him and others from himself. He wants, but he doesn’t feel he can _have._ The tattooed symbol is so perfect for this part of him that she instantly hates it.

Emily steps forward slowly, once and then again, until her foot brushes the heap of pants at his feet. His eyes widen, his expression changes to confused curiosity, and she can feel him getting tighter all over at her proximity. She raises one hand, lets it hover over the spot on his chest she touched before, and then pushes her palm back into place. She feels a faint double beat when her hand lands and his chest swells under it as he takes a sudden breath in. Then she moves her other hand. The progression is painfully slow as she makes sure he sees where she’s going. It slips down between them, hovers over the lower circle of the tattoo, and then presses until her fingertips barely touch the skin. He jerks and it breaks their contact, but she makes a low, reassuring noise and repeats the process.

“What are…”

“Show me the tattoo,” she whispers. “All of it.”

“I… what?”

Her fingers slip to the hem that he’s still clutching, and she traces them along the line that divides the tattoo. Then she takes a half step closer until the length of his body just barely registers along hers. His hips twist away slightly but he stays still.

“I want to see it.” Her hand leaves his thigh and slips up to the waistband of his briefs. The pads of her fingers wiggle beneath the fabric and hold there, telling him what she’s after in no uncertain terms.

“I can’t,” he sighs wetly, but he knocks his forehead against hers and dips as if he’s going to kiss her.

She presses her fingers into his hips, nails scraping lightly. His hips arch further away and he hisses into her cheek. 

“Show. Me.”

He makes a grumbling noise that reverberates in his chest oddly and then she becomes mesmerized as his hand holding the hem of his briefs releases them and then curls up over her fingers, using them to drag the fabric over his hip bone and down. There’s some maneuvering – he’s half hard and there’s no way to hide it now – and then the briefs fall away to join his pants around his feet. She can hear him breathing through his mouth in rattling pulls, and it almost chokes off with a squeak when her fingers find the uncovered tattoo and trace every millimeter of it. By the time she’s circling the arch of the snake’s head where it disappears into the hair around him, he’s gasping, legs vibrating, pressed hard against her clothes.

“Emily…” he warns, his voice tight.

“Nope,” she brushes into his cheek. “This snake doesn’t scare me.”

One of his hands flashes to her face and pulls her mouth to his. He forgets to be gentle. He’s alternating between gasping and latching hungrily onto her mouth. She sways into the kiss, unprepared for how intense it is, and her hand on his chest slides up until she’s captured his jaw and yanked him even closer. He moans – she’s never heard that sound from him before and it quietly blows her mind for a moment. Then he stumbles closer, trying to pull her into him. He forgets the clothes around his feet and trips, collapsing into her, and she in turn falls back into his couch with an unexpected ‘whoop’. At least it’s the couch and not the floor.

“Sorry… Christ, I’m sorry, Em…” he gasps as he tries to buttress his weight with his arms and not crush her. “Not good at this…”

“Shut up,” she grabs his lips between her teeth and bites just enough to warn him. “Just… _do it._ Be neurotic later.”

He appears shocked, like this wasn’t always going end up with them rutting on his sofa, so she starts fumbling at her belt and growls for him to help. After a few moments of blinking, he joins in, fingers agile and eager to get at her as they both wiggle and make quiet noises while getting her clothes out of the way as much as they can.

Honestly, as much as she had a plan, she hadn’t counted on _this._ It feels like setting a lighter to something volatile that’s lain dormant far too long, and it’s in both of them. She can’t stop it now, not even if she wanted to, but she’s worried about burning them to the ground in the process. She really had no clue he was like this – it’s a startling discovery – but now she feels out of her depth. Just a child fascinated by fire and playing with matches. Her brain chatters all of this urgently in the background, but her hands grip him until it hurts and she whimpers breathy, monosyllabic encouragement like she has no doubts.

They don’t waste time. She imagines that if he’s even remotely as frustrated as she’s been for the last little while, he won’t last too long anyway. Then he pushes in and they move together, crying at different pitches but it’s the same sentiment. _Want this… scared to death but I want this. Want you. You, youyouyouyouohgodplease…_

“Tell me this is real,” he gasps into her neck, back bowing hard under her grip. “Tell me it’s not something else…”

She rolls her hips to get more of him, hampered a little by her jeans still tangled halfway down one calf. He groans as he accidentally slips further, and then sucks out the satisfaction of it along her collarbone. _Jesus Christ, Spencer Fucking Reid…_ The noise primes her, and she wants to flip him over and ride him until she goes off, but his hands are knotted in her blouse and they pin her to where she is instead. She decides it’s going to be a quick, random fuck because it has to be. It has to be because she needs to get free, pull him back to his bed, and take him apart slowly and meticulously so he gets it: I’M NOT SCARED OF YOU. Though she sorta is. She jams her hips up into his painfully and then grabs his neck when he pulls back with a surprised yelp. 

“Come right now or I’ll never forgive you,” she gasps and then is gone. 

It’s brief and brilliant, but she doesn’t care. Nothing matters but the full-body, tingling ‘thank you’ that her limbic system is pushing out and the strong, steady pull of him as he sees her through it and then stutters against her when he follows. She arches up into that soundless gasp as he lets go, and they get sloppy and deep, arms curling each other up and hitching together in the last twitches of pleasure. 

Then he kisses her and kisses her, clutching her close as if he wants to fold her into him. She almost can’t breathe. It becomes what the fucking couldn’t be: unbroken, lush, _more._ And it just keeps going and going. He’s digging into her everywhere and she’s half falling off the couch, but she holds on and greedily demands pull after lazy pull from him. It’s awkward and fantastic at the same time, and she hasn’t been this aroused by a man beyond the confines of his dick in ages.

“Uh…” he gasps when she finally lets him come up for air. He bends his forehead to rest in the crook of her neck and they’re both heaving like they’ve just outrun the devil. “Em…”

“You’re crushing my leg…”

“Oh, sorry… I’m so sorry,” he jolts away from her as if electrocuted. “God… this isn’t how I wanted this to happen…”

He sags back into the couch and she shimmies up to look at him. His hair is even more tangled than before and his expression is blown out, but also sad. She reaches for him, trying to straighten out the hair with her fingers.

“How did you want it to happen?” she huffs, because she didn’t have a ‘sex plan’ and she’s curious about his.

“Just… not so quick, I guess.” He curls away from her.

“Well, we took the edge off, that’s all. Next time we’ll have more control.”

His head snaps back to face her. “Next time?”

Her whole-body flush feels as if it drains from her instantly. Did she massively misunderstand what just happened between them? She looks away quickly, scans the darkness for the shapes of her clothes. She needs to find the quickest way out of here… Walk of shame again. Dammit.

“It’s, uh, late. I should get going…” Aw, fuck you, Emily Prentiss…

His hand grabs her wrist as she attempts to shrug back into her blouse, and her eyes are drawn upwards again. The sofa creaks as he leans in.

“I don’t want you to go, Emily,” he says softly. “Do you… do you want to stay? Because… it would make me happy if you did.”

And she blooms under that statement in the dark like a stupid teenager. Fuck you, Emily Prentiss indeed. You’re gonna break each other’s hearts.

“Then I’d like to stay,” she whispers back.

The grin that elicits from him is splendid even in the shadows of his living room. Her chest hiccups when she sees it, and again when he pulls her up from the couch, against him, and then shuffles them back towards his bedroom. His eyes never leave her, not even when he bumps into the bedroom doorframe by accident, and his smile looks like it might become a permanent fixture too.


	21. Chapter 21

She rolls against him and plants a kiss on the pec over his heart. He watches her, tangled in the sheets, flushed and amazing, and his mind checks out on him again – just a barren landscape of wonderment. It’s been happening all night, ever since she pushed her way into his place and demanded the know the worst thing about him. He had no clue it would end this way.

“I really thought you’d have one here,” she murmurs into his skin absently. Her voice sounds warm and thick, like she’s drowsy. Not that he’s allowed her to sleep since he got her here…

“Not yet,” he whispers back, heart melting under her lips.

“What are you waiting for?” She glances up at him. The lines around her eyes are crinkled beautifully because she’s smiling at him.

“The right one,” he says simply and refuses to elaborate. 

His pulse is going haywire and she has no idea as she props her chin on his chest. He never wants to leave this place; his sole desire is to stay here with her looking at him as if he’s everything she’s ever wanted forever. He’s afraid of the outside world and what it will do to this… happiness, and he also knows that this is his fixation ramping up in him. She thinks she understands it. She thinks that it’s garden-variety neurosis or a lack of self-worth, but he’s lived through it more than once and knows better. He wonders how long he’ll get until the girl with the pigtails decides he’s no longer cool enough to hang out with. There’s always a better boy out there: stronger, braver, sexier… Nothing beautiful stays.

She wiggles her eyebrows at him and grins. “That’s not cryptic at all. What’s the criteria for ‘the right one’?”

He suddenly rolls her onto her back and pushes into her without warning. She gasps an ‘oh!’ into his mouth as he sinks into her lips and begins a slow, drawing rhythm that he’s quickly discovered she likes. She’s probably sore, but she pulls him in anyway. He chokes down the words, _You’re the only thing I want anymore._

“Again?” she whispers against his lips when he breathes. “I think you might be a little bit magic, Spencer Reid.”

She’s warm and giving and just fucking astonishing - _she’s_ the one with the magic. And he loses himself in her, kissing and curling and stretching to make it perfect one more time. He’s racing the dawn; it’s already tinting the bottom of the windows with pastel light. He wants to squeeze out every drop of love this night has given to him. If she changes her mind in the light of day, so be it. But he’ll have this night where he loved his best friend utterly and didn’t hide it away. He’ll never forget this unique ecstasy.


	22. Chapter 22

She keeps coming back.

At work, they are as they’ve always been. It’s almost comically easy to pretend nothing’s changed. She still sneaks up and scares the bejeezus out of him just to hear him yelp. She still makes up for it with apology coffees and warm smiles. They still spend their lunches together and they still razz each other about the nerdy things no one else knows about them. She buys him a new .38 to replace the one he lost in the river, and a strip of Velcro so that he doesn’t lose it. He buys her the complete box set of _Doctor Who_ seasons nine through eleven, and sends her a spreadsheet schedule for her to tick off her viewing progress. No one would say they were any different. Even he has a hard time spotting anything in the ‘daylight’ them.

But she comes back.

He spends the first seventy-two hours after their night together working himself into a self-loathing frenzy, rerunning every instant as if he’s looking for evidence of the brain goblins who have sabotaged this so quickly. Then there’s a soft knock at his door, and she’s in the hallway looking a little frenzied too and it’s nothing like their ‘daylight’ selves, and they reach for one another at the same time, and the seventy-two hours evaporate instantly.

“I stayed away as long as I could,” she gasps in his arms afterwards. The hardwood is making his knee complain and he decides that from now on, they must make a greater effort to get to the bed first.

“Why would you stay away?” He tries to hide his hurt by stroking her hair. Her mouth gets tight like she’s holding something in.

“ ‘Cause I’m stupid, I guess. I don’t want to ruin this.”

That is stupid, but not for the reason she thinks. _She_ won’t ruin it…

“Don’t stay away,” he kisses her. “Please.”

“Okay.” So, she keeps showing up.

Sometimes it’s just mindless and instinctive. He’s never really been this way with anyone else. Like Simone predicted, he became a thoughtful lover over the years. But Emily makes him _basic_ somehow; something primitive rises to the surface in him for her and he lets it take control because the high it produces is both purer and scarier than Dilaudid. But it’s not always like that. As they get used to one another, it quite often becomes another thing entirely. Languid and indulgent, a lavish lovemaking that isn’t always about sex. He adores it, craves it, sinks under its swell and welcomes the hours of drowning in it. Kissing her, tracing her skin, whispering strange midnight things as they tangle around each other in the dark. It’s a secret world built for and by only them, and it’s everything. An adult version of a clandestine society of two. Somehow the daylight never penetrates it, and it never shadows their diurnal selves. It becomes a miracle he can’t parse. And it endures.

One evening they are stretched along his couch, she draped over his chest as he threads through her hair in the glow of the tv. She twists to look up at him and he draws his eyes to meet hers, waiting. A little crease forms between her brows.

“Can I ask…” she mumbles eventually. “Why me?”

His eyebrows rise because he thinks the answer is obvious.

“What I mean is, why did you want me to find that first tattoo?”

Oh. He shrugs.

“You were the easiest one.”

She looks confused, or possibly offended, and he chides himself for not doing better.

“That’s to say, you are the most easy-going, the least judgmental of my friends. There was a better chance you’d listen rather than conclude, in my opinion. Imagine J.J. worrying over the badge on my foot, or Morgan becoming angry at my story about Simone… And I couldn’t show any of them the ouroboros.”

Her eyes get wide and then she nods, looking a little stunned. “Makes sense,” she breathes. He cups her face gently, draws her back to him again.

“I never dreamed it would come to this, Emily. Well… maybe I had dreams but… I realistically only hoped for friendship.” He pauses. “After that call from Kentucky, I figured I didn’t have a shot anyway.”

She lifts herself away from his chest, her frown getting deeper. “So why did you reach out to me in the elevator that day?”

He feels his embarrassment color his face and he shakes hair into his eyes to hide it. “I told you… I fixate…”

“Spencer,” she shuffles up until they are almost nose to nose. Her expression is an odd mix of tenderness and exasperation. “Has it ever occurred to you that this ‘fixation’ quality that you hate so much is actually something else?”

He doesn’t understand her. Shakes his head.

“I mean, what if you chose to see it as ‘joy’, or ‘commitment’, or ‘dedication’, or ‘passion’, or, like, a dozen other _positive_ acronyms. What if this central facet of you is a symptom of your mighty heart, and nothing more?”

He swallows hard, choking down the immense feeling she’s teased out of him with a few, simple sentences. It’s gorgeous, just like her, and of course she would see it that way, but it wasn’t so. Was it?

“I-I’m an addict…” he stutters.

“Yeah, you’re an addict,” she nods. “But maybe that is separate from the joy, commitment, and passion that drives you to be you. It seems a little reductive to lump them all together in a single, negative personality trait, and frankly, I don’t see the connection. I think you’ve just convinced yourself it’s there.”

He can’t look at her. She thinks he has a mighty heart. She thinks he’s magic. He’s not. No one’s ever said these things to him. There’s no way for him to objectively ascertain if they are true or not. Her hand skims along his cheek.

“Spence, I just know what I’ve seen with my own eyes,” she says gently. “Maybe you can toss that opinion aside and say I’m emotionally biased. There’s accuracy in that. But I’m also trained to read people, to see the things they want to hide. I’m telling you: look at yourself differently. Because all I see is someone who is good and gentle and unjustifiably hard on himself.”

Her lips land on his and linger. He just feels stunned all over.

“I love this part of you that you choose to hate, and that’s difficult to withstand,” she says shakily. “I wish I could show you yourself through my eyes… You’d love it too.”

He’s having a hard time swallowing around his heart that’s pounding away at its new location in the back of his throat.

“You… l-love it?”

She ducks her eyes. “Yeah. I do. And to hell with you if you think I shouldn’t.”

 _Well._ His eyebrows try to launch themselves from his forehead and his mouth goes bone-dry. She looks back and she doesn’t seem to know what to make of him. She grumbles a little, her cheeks flaming. This combination of affection and frustration is breathtaking on her.

“Sometimes I get carried away…”

“Go ahead. Get carried away all you want,” he breathes, shocked that he’s managed any words at all. She perks up on his chest, looking curious and interested.

“Historically,” she murmurs after a long, silent moment. “Being carried away has caused me a lot of trouble.”

“Me too,” he gusts, and then smiles at her. The sort of smile he gives to the pigtailed version of her in his dreams. “How about that…”

It’s the beginning of the ending of something he thought he’d never lose.


	23. Chapter 23

He falls down again. It’s getting ridiculous. Maybe he should just stay on the floor and save himself the trouble. And he should probably stop drinking beer – that’s clearly not helping at all. He shoves his bottle away, spills it over his hand, and watches the feet walk around him. It’s sorta nice down here where no one’s eyes look, comforting. It’s sorta like how he’s always been: easily avoided, occasionally invisible. And it’s a lot less spinny.

“Jesus, how drunk are you?”

A pair of shoes has stopped in front of his sprawled legs on the bar floor. The shoes are pretty. He smiles at them, delighted by their ability to please him merely by existing. There are pretty feet in the shoes, and they lead to pretty legs. He follows the legs up, up, up, and then grins. No wonder the feet were pretty…

“Em’ly,” he mumbles and throws both hands in the air in celebration, wiggling his fingers. She snorts at the display and tries to roll it into a chuckle. She’s drunk too, hence the snorting. She doesn’t think he knows, but _he knows._

“Why are you on the floor?”

“Gravity hates me,” he waves it off. “ ‘S fine.”

“I don’t think it’s gravity,” she huffs as she tries to yank him up. He’s befuddled enough that he needs her help but he’s also not trying too hard because the clumsier he is, the more he gets to flop against her and in the past four months he’s discovered that there’s almost nothing in the whole, wide, incredible world he loves more than being close to her. He collapses against her like day-old fish with a toothy grin.

She grunts and does her best to get them both steady but it’s a near thing. People keep brushing past them in the bar and set them off wobbling again. It’s like a true Spencer Reid dance. He laughs out loud at the thought; his brain is delightful on ethyl alcohol.

“Your liver’s gonna hate you. And your kidneys. Your pancreas might walk out on you and your brain will probably give you the silent treatment for a day or so,” she huffs as she lobs one of his noodle-arms around her neck. His fingers immediately clutch at her where friend’s fingers shouldn’t clutch. He loves that too. He loves that he has right to do that, even though he shouldn’t: they are in public tonight. “C’mon, Spence,” she grumbles. “A little help here…”

“Nah,” he breathes in her ear. “That’s no fun at all. I wanna have _fun._ ”

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?” She’s grinning back at him, too close to focus on, but he can tell she’s blushing nonetheless. “Handsy bastard…”

“Can’t help it,” he mumbles while trying to look adorably innocent. “You’re lovely.”

She rolls her eyes at him. Well, it’s sorta a generalized roll-y blur but he gets the gist of it. “You are _so_ drunk.”

“Yeah, but I’m funnyfunnyfunny. And like a praying mantis on stilts in a hurricane. Which is also funny if you think about it hard enough.” His hand wraps tightly around her waist and pulls her near until they almost collapse in a heap again. She’s soft and giggly and stimulating from toes to cranium every damn second, and he’s in love so in love, and she’s the friend he’s always wanted, and the woman he thought he’d search for in vain the rest of his life… “But all of that’s fine.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I love the company I’m keeping these days. Love it mightily.” He looks her straight in the eye when he says it. It’s blurry but he means it. They’re out with the team and they have to be so, so careful around work, but he wants to climb up on the bar this instant and tell everyone that Emily Prentiss just caves him in. He wants to yell _she’s the only one_ like the drunken lunatic he currently is. But he’d probably fall down again, and then Hotch would fire him.

“Who’s Pretty Boy in love with?”

Emily is blinking a lot. Like, _a lot_ , and he wonders what that means. Her cheeks are almost scarlet as she stares, and then she snaps a sarcastic expression over all of that blinking and blushing, and turns to answer Morgan.

“Microbreweries,” she says without skipping a beat. “And their intoxicating products. Honestly, Derek, was it you who let him lurch off on his own? He was plopped down in the middle of the floor like a gangly ottoman.”

Morgan guffaws so hard he sloshes his own beer around. Reid watches it arc gracefully through the air and wonders if time actually slows for a moment, or if he’s started seeing vapor trails. Pretty beer… 

“Ottoman…” his mind burps, then he squints at Emily. “Do you intend _to sit_ on me?” Not that he’d object to that, he’ll be any kind of furniture she wants… Morgan laughs so hard he spills what remains of his drink. Emily’s head whips around so fast that it makes him dizzy, and she gives him a semi-lethal stare.

“Right, that’s it. You’re done for the night,” she says crisply. Uh-oh… that’s her _you’re-in-trouble_ voice. She glances back at Morgan. “I’m gonna pour him into a cab and then make sure he can drain himself out again at the other end. Tell the gang I said ‘bye’, okay?”

“I can take him, Prentiss,” Morgan smiles. “No need to cut the night short because my boy here’s a lightweight.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got him,” she says.

Reid stumbles against her and makes a showy effort of needing to grab hold of her like some sort of newly-discovered, tentacled human. He grins as she grumbles and braces his weight. “She’s got me.”

Morgan laughs loudly and then grabs Reid by the cheeks and plants a kiss square on his lips. “You’re a great drunk, brother. I love ya, man…”

“Christ, everyone loves everybody tonight…” Emily complains as she turns and heaves them both towards the exit. Reid can hear Morgan’s booming laugh until they get outside.

“Morgan kissed me,” he says, a bit stunned. “What do you suppose that means?”

“It probably means that Morgan wanted to kiss you,” she says distractedly as she props him up at the curb and tries to wave down a cab.

“Huh,” he thinks for a moment. “Well, in that case…”

He pulls her back and they stumble together. One hand wraps her up and the other grasps her jaw and draws her in. It’s breathless and deep and tastes a little too much like beer, but he doesn’t mind. He’s wanted her all night. He wants to tell the world he has what he desires for once, and how novel that is for him. He wants to work up the nerve to ask her if this is going _somewhere_ – because he thinks it is – and that means keeping it secret is going to get less and less realistic. He wants to tell her that this is the first time he’s felt special, and that it feels like a joy rather than a burden. 

He pulls at her lips again and again, swallowing the tiny sounds she makes when he surprises her and the grateful murmurs afterwards. Her hands grip hard into his jacket and he arches her closer, but their balance is compromised and she pulls away with a gasp and a bracing step back to avoid calamity. Her mouth is as flushed as her cheeks now. He grins. Pretty, pretty, pretty…

“What was that?”

He shrugs. “I wanted to kiss you.”

“We’re in public, Spence.”

“Everyone’s inside.”

“Yeah, but even so…” she says quietly and then looks around. The thrill of it cools along his neck, making him shiver suddenly in the night air. Where was the harm in it?

“Are you… upset?”

“No.” She starts waving at passing cabs again. He lurches forward and catches her wrist gently in his hand, then he stumbles against her feeling very unsteady and only part of it is due to the booze.

“Are you ashamed?” he mumbles into her cheek. She turns quickly to look at him.

“Absolutely not, Spence.” She cups his face in her hands. “Where the hell did that come from?”

He shrugs like a child who knows what to say but refuses to say it for fear it’ll come true. She brushes her nose against his and he looks at her blurrily.

“We’re doing this because of the stupid no-fraternizing bullshit at work, Spencer, that’s all. Promise.”

“Okay. ‘M just drunk I guess. Too emotional.” How is he going to explain the feely, love-y lunatic stuff going on inside him now? How will he ask for more? He wants more, so much more…

_I love you, pretty girl…_

She wrangles a cab and shoves him into it, bumping in alongside him before he knows what’s happening. She gives the driver only his address and he turns to look at her from where he’s slouched against the seat back.

“You staying with me tonight?”

“Dude, you almost outed us using a footrest metaphor. Damn right I’m staying with you tonight. You owe me some illicit, make-up cuddling for that.”

He slinks slowly across the vinyl seat back until he can rest his chin on her shoulder.

“You’re so right. I’ve been bad. I deserve this.” He says it with a straight face and wide eyes. His brain wants to get back to the problem of where they are going, but the beer has teamed up with his libido and they are perked up, interested in something else entirely. His brain makes some loud grumblings but then gives up in disgust when he ends up nuzzling her neck instead. She’s warm and squeaking and trying to push him away while pulling him closer… He can’t help it: she’s magic and he’s completely enthralled.

“You’re _so_ drunk,” she giggles as she rolls him back into the vinyl and kisses him like there’s no one watching.


	24. Chapter 24

“Hey, gorgeous. I’ve got a piping fresh coroner’s report here and I thought of you. How about you let me buy you a cup of free, squad room coffee and we can go through it together? It’ll be this romantic story we can tell our kids one day…”

“How about you hand me the report, Detective, keep the stale coffee, and I forget my impulse to shove my tasteful heels up your ass?” 

“Kinky. My kinda woman.”

Prentiss smiles at Detective Hollis as he leans over the desk and drops the report on it. They both laugh, he genuinely, she diplomatically, and Reid’s grip tightens around his marker until a knuckle makes a loud popping sound. 

Hollis has been hitting on Emily relentlessly for days and Reid feels about one ‘Hey, gorgeous’ away from some sort of psychological meltdown. Adrenaline superheats him whenever the man drifts near her, his broad hands finding excuses to land on her shoulder, cup her elbow, drifting along the arm of her jacket. The All-American specimen fills every space with his confidence, his easy laugh, and the inappropriate humor that would land someone like Reid with an HR citation. People like him. Emily doesn’t do enough to dissuade him. Hotch and the others seem indifferent to his behavior. Reid does nothing, and he hates every single one of them equally for their failings. He puts his head down and goes back to work, gritting his teeth when he hears Emily laugh at one of Hollis’s stupid jokes.

A day later, a group of them are informally gathered around their evidence board trying to make connections between past and present victims. There’s a general hum of activity in the squad room, but Reid can still hear Hollis trying to goad Emily into dinner for the sixth time.

“How many different ways does she need to say no?” he snaps and draws the attention of everyone around him. His face burns. He hadn’t meant to do that. Emily is wearing a studied, blank expression that tells him she’s angry. 

“I think she can speak for herself,” Hollis says cautiously. 

Hotch steps forward and places a hand on Reid’s shoulder. “Go get some coffee.”

He shuffles away miserably. Emily doesn’t follow, doesn’t chew him out for it. They just keep working.

Hollis restrains himself for a while, but a few days later has forgotten all about Reid, which surprises no one, least of all Reid. They catch their suspect and Hollis is a part of that so he’s basking in the glow of success his colleagues are showering over him. His confidence unnecessarily boosted, and with the team in town for one last night, Hollis rolls right up to Emily and asks her out.

“The case is closed,” he grins. “There’s nothing unprofessional in it now. Let me treat you to an evening of fun. It’s probably been a while, huh?”

Reid is standing ten feet away but he might as well be invisible. Just like he’s always been. His neck gets hot as something incendiary flashes back and forth under his skin. His fists curl around his messenger bag and he’s staring so intently at them that his eyes begin to hurt. Then he’s blinking too hard, focus narrowed to Hollis’s hands, telling them to stay in his pockets where they belong. 

_Don’t touch her. You’ll never have that right. You’ll never feel her against you. She’s not yours to dream about. Don’t imagine what your children will look like. Don’t. You. Dare…_

All Emily has to do is tell him she’s seeing someone. Or she’s not interested. Or she’s too tired. All she has to do is tell him _fucking no._

“You just don’t give up, do you?” she smirks, packing her bag.

Hollis leans closer, smiles, pulls a hand from his pocket and lets it drift to her arm. _Oh, screw you,_ Reid’s superheated brain hisses.

“Faint heart never won fair lady,” Hollis grins.

“Jesus,” Reid growls before he can make the choice. Both Hollis and Emily look up and stare at him. “Seriously? That’s the best you can muster? You think she’s gonna say yes after nine days by using that tired line? Do you even know where that phrase comes from? I do…”

“Spencer-” Emily murmurs a warning but it’s too late. Hollis strides over to him, a deep V forming between his Cro-Magnon brows.

“Man, what is your deal here? Are you into her or something? Because she and I have talked a lot and she’s never mentioned anyone, let alone some defensive little fruit who can’t let a woman decide for herself.”

“Hollis, that’s enough,” Emily barks.

“Nah, nah, nah. Brain Trust here started it. Let him finish it like a man.” Hollis turns on Reid again, using all of his size to intimidate him. “You are a man, right? She’s beautiful and you wouldn’t be much of one if you didn’t want some of that.”

“Want some of _that?!_ ” Reid can’t feel his body. He can’t see anything. There’s only Hollis staring pugnaciously at him. Just Hollis and an alien, white-hot rage that takes his breath from him.

“You know what I mean. She probably smiles at you sometimes and you’re all protective of her now. I get it – don’t blame you.” Hollis crowds in a little closer, lowers his voice. “But that doesn’t mean she’ll lie down and let you have her like a stray dog no one wants. I mean, there’s generosity and there’s whoring yourself out, dude. Quality women like her don’t give it up for pity. She’ll only come for a guy with the balls to take-”

Reid hauls off and slugs him. He’s never hit anyone outside of personal defense in his life. It’s terrible and exhilarating simultaneously. There’s a swell of power, of justifiable possession in it, and it’s like the basic, mammalian thing that Emily has drawn to the surface in him from the beginning. His knuckles feel like they are exploding under his skin, and he hears Emily yell his name in shock, but that all fades away when Hollis shakes his head, blinks, and then slugs Reid right back.

He wakes up on the squad room floor and Morgan has Hollis in a headlock while Hotch tries to talk them both down. Emily’s eyes keep flitting between a growling Morgan and Reid laying at her feet, his jaw pounding.

“The damned nerd started it!” Hollis heaves in Morgan’s grip as Morgan swears he’ll choke him out. Hotch responds that no one is getting choked out this evening in the most measured tone imaginable. Emily looks back at Reid and her stare withers.

“Jackass,” she hisses at him, and then deals with Morgan instead.

\-----

He’s icing his jaw and staring at his hotel room door waiting for the inevitable. It takes her longer than he thought it would to start pounding on it.

“Open up!” she growls through the wood and then pushes her way in when he answers it. “What the hell is your problem?! What were you _thinking?_ ”

“Why? Because he’s bigger than me?” he mutters through the ice pack. “Because I’m not a fighter?”

“No. Because it was none of your business, that’s why.”

“None of my business? How is it not my business? He’s been hitting on you for _a week and a half_! I held it in as long as I could stand it-”

“And THAT’S the problem,” she storms up on him, absolutely enraged. “You only thought about yourself. You didn’t think about the team and how we’d work with the locals if we ruffled their feathers too much. You didn’t think about what a pretty good investigator Hollis is, despite his knuckle dragging tendencies. You _certainly_ didn’t think about how your tantrum undermined me in front of his whole department – like I was a fucking damsel that needed saving instead of a professional who was working the situation to her benefit… you just… didn’t fucking trust me, Spencer!”

He lowers the ice pack in a daze. She’s right: he didn’t think of any of that. All he saw was a potential predator that was circling someone he’d staked out for his own. That wasn’t like him at all. When had he become this person? There wasn’t a shred of that justifiable possession in him now to come to his defense.

“And then you hit him!” she went on, throwing her hands in the air. “You must be insane because you can’t throw a punch to escape a wet bag, let alone to drop a guy who outweighs you by at least thirty pounds…”

“I had to…”

“What?”

“I had to,” he mumbles, feeling mortified and lesser and everything he’s afraid he’ll never be to her. “You didn’t hear him, what he said…”

“Why?” her face creases up in exasperation. “What does it matter what stupid, sexist shit he said to goad you-”

“It matters because he was humiliating the external manifestation of my heart, okay?” he snaps, his body shaking, making the pounding in his jaw even worse. He’s not going to win this argument – he knows it – and the consequences of that are beginning to settle in. 

“He was denigrating you and it was disgusting and ignorant. Yes, I should’ve been above it, but it’s a lot to ask to transcend that day after day…” He looks at her, vision blurring and his face getting too hot. “Why didn’t you tell him you had someone? It wouldn’t have damaged the working relationship… why couldn’t you just say that?”

She blinks, stalled by how he’s turned the tables on her in an instant. “We’re not talking about my decisions, we’re talking about yours…”

“You didn’t want to say it, did you?” He takes a halting step forward, silently begging her to deny it. “Not even if it was a non-specific reference to a ‘boyfriend’. You didn’t even want to admit to that.”

“You’re being ridiculous now,” she hisses, crossing her arms over her chest. “Why would I tell an arrogant LEO anything about my personal life in the first place? Why should I be expected to preemptively defend myself that way?”

“Why do you see it only as an excuse?” he asks quietly. “Why wouldn’t you say it because you’re proud of it?”

Silence falls around them in the room and it’s crushing. Just as he had no clue that it would begin the way it did, he had no inkling that it would end here, abruptly, in a crappy motel in Dayton, Ohio. Because _it is_ ending – he’s sure of it. He just deluded himself for a while that this time would be different.

“We’ve never existed outside my apartment,” he whispers. It’s all hitting home at once and he’s numbed by it. Perhaps that’s a blessing. Feeling it all, and not being able to retreat somewhere safe, would be torturous. “I never questioned that. In five months, I never questioned it…”

“Spencer,” she warns, her voice caught somewhere between horrified and pissed off. “Don’t turn this into something it’s not.”

“What is it _not_ , Em?” He waits but she doesn’t say anything, frozen in her anger with her arms still pinched across her chest. How could he have convinced himself that she’d stay with him? No one ever stays. When she said he was magic and different and mighty, it wasn’t true. And she almost had him convinced. He narrows his gaze at her silence and bites down on the sudden crest of anger that’s become his best friend over the last nine days. 

“I always knew you’d leave eventually,” he hisses, feeling every inch the snake etched into his thigh. _That_ is the truth and always will be. “No one plans a future with someone like me…”

She barks out a loud, hideous laugh as color rises in her cheeks. Then she leans in to begin some hissing and snapping of her own. 

“You’re such a child, Spencer – a self-pitying child. If you’d taken the time to remove your head from your self-loathing ass you’d have seen that’s _exactly what I was doing!_ Planning and stuff! Around YOU!” She runs a hand roughly through her hair, squeezing her eyes shut as if it’s painful. “And you have no idea how strange that is for me, because you’re just too busy waiting for me to confirm that you’re worthless and then _leave._ Well… congratulations…” She spreads her arms wide and gives him a terrible smile. “I guess you got that right ‘cause I’m leaving. Trying to persuade you of something better is fucking exhausting – so, you win.”

Her arms fall and so does the rictus lining her face. She stands there a moment longer, blinking, waiting, and then her expression collapses and she shrugs both him and the scene in his room away as she storms for the door.

“You owe Morgan an apology,” she seethes over her shoulder as she goes. “He’s getting written up for defending you in that little stunt today. See that you make it up to him. If you can manage that.”

She slams the door behind her and he jumps at it even though he knows it’s coming. And then he just stares at the door for a full minute. He doesn’t remember how or when it happens, but he comes back to himself and he’s on his knees facing the door, gasping like the room is running out of oxygen. His pulse is booming at his temples, in his throat, angering his swollen jaw, and when he reaches up to test the bruises, his fingers come away wet.

He crouches low and gives into crying like the child she’s accused him of being.


	25. Chapter 25

The plane ride back from Ohio is punishing. She plants herself between J.J. and Morgan, and refuses to look at him once. 

Stupid little shit. Not only did he lose his cool like a teenager dumped before prom, but he made a spectacle of them both, embarrassed her thoroughly, and then made the whole event the litmus test for their entire goddamned relationship. It’s like he was _waiting_ for an excuse to push her out the door, and then he had the balls to act hurt about it. All because she didn’t tell that dickweed Hollis that if he came at her one more time in front of her man she’d dice him into bite-sized appetizers. 

_Her man._ Shit.

How was she supposed to do that in front of everyone? Hotch was already eying the two of them suspiciously. Why couldn’t Spencer just suck it up like she did? Did he think that she actually _enjoyed_ being treated like an object rather than a goddamned professional? Why did he make it into more than it was? Why did he try so hard to make it seem temporary? Couldn’t he _feel_ that was a lie? He distrusted the part of him that loved so much, and she didn’t know how to fight that. She didn’t know how to change his mind.

And now? Well, it seems as if he’s relieved that his inevitable ‘truth’ about all relationships has arrived and she’s… compartmentalizing like a fiend because she will NOT breakdown in front of her colleagues. She will not revisit the blubbering version of her twenty-year-old self who gave her heart away and didn’t have a back-up plan when the recipient turned out to be a jerk. 

_Should’ve been stronger. Should’ve protected myself. Knew this wouldn’t work – knew it._

He doesn’t even know how difficult it was to convince herself to take such a risk again in the first place. She thought because they started out as friends… well, she doesn’t know what she thinks now. She’s just hoping that somehow it’ll magically get mended. It’s a stupid hope: situations don’t fix themselves, only people can do that. How does she convince him to _believe_ in them? What if he never will?

She can feel his eyes on her for the whole journey, but everyone else’s are on her as well. It’s hell. Everyone wants to know why he went off like that – it doesn’t mesh with their aura of ‘friendship’. She feels hot and uncomfortable under everyone’s scrutiny, and she wants to stand up in the cabin and announce that they all need to mind their own business. But that will make things worse. 

Then she starts to wonder why she’s afraid of what they’ll see. She realizes that it _isn’t_ the anti-fraternization policy that she’s leery of; in her heart of hearts, she doesn’t really give a damn about that. She sees that the reason is a far more personal one: it’s how declaring it will change it. So far, the only people who could be affected or disappointed are her and him. But if they go public, everyone gets an opinion about it from that point forward. And if they fail, then there’s an avalanche of personalities to deal with, sides will be taken, and they will be judged. She doesn’t want to negotiate with an angry Morgan or a protective J.J. if she ends up breaking Reid’s heart, and there’s every chance that could happen. Hell, it’s sorta happening right now… If they keep things private, it just reduces the pressure to succeed. Shouldn’t that be a good thing, especially when they both seem so gun shy?

Then there’s how she enjoys the privacy of them – their cozy, cocoon of two. It feels like a haven she’s searched for her whole adult life. Is it selfish to want to keep that? To keep him entirely for herself? He obviously doesn’t want that anymore, but to her it’s everything. It is the breadth and force of what she feels for him, and she’s a little afraid of it, afraid to let others see it. She’s always been wary of being someone’s ‘person’ – becoming a possession that commodifies her rather than connecting her to another. When they are alone together, she’s still Emily to him – she can see it in his eyes. She’s not a pretty thing or a nice lay. She matters to him, and that turns her on more than she can express. She thought that would be enough – she didn’t think he’d need to display her for the benefit of others. The idea is disappointing and makes her wonder how he considers her: a friend he cares for, or an addition to himself that boosts his social currency? It’s depressing that possibly a small part of him might want the latter. She won’t be owned, not by him, not even by how much she needs him. She’d sooner break them both into a dozen, bleeding pieces.

But his words come back to her in her sullen introspection: _why wouldn’t you say it because you’re proud of it?_ It’s such a hurt, raw suspicion of shame that it makes her choke just recalling the question. She _is_ proud, unspeakably touched when he calls her lovely or tells her how happy she makes him. Her – Emily Prentiss – a woman who’s been the arsenic to every relationship she’s ever attempted. She’s managed not to screw this up for over five months. Until now, at least. It’s a miracle that he clearly doesn’t appreciate. How could he not know that? What had she failed to give on that score?

Simone rises like a specter in the back of her mind. She is Reid’s touchstone, the bedrock of his emotional defensiveness. She’s the reason why his love map is all screwed up. He _expects_ Emily to be ashamed, or using him for other reasons because that’s been his history. He sees what he expects to find, and not the quiet, precious joy that Emily associates with them instead. It’s so devastatingly simple, but she doesn’t know how to fix it. 

Would it make any difference now to tell him the fact they’d made it five months had fostered hope in her to think that maybe this wasn’t just an affair? It’s a notion that scares her, but she was willing to look right into the heart of that fear because they were just so damned satisfying together. She’d begun to think dangerous thoughts, long-term thoughts… Maybe she should’ve said something sooner.

But now there was this breach of trust, a loss of faith between them. His fear of inadequacy and her fear of commitment. His absolute belief that she would leave him for one reason or another, and her refusal to be something claimed. It started to look insurmountable to her: they couldn’t mend one another’s neuroses. That isn’t a lover’s job. But if they end, then surely their friendship breaks as well. Her chest seizes at the thought of losing _all of him_ , and her eyes flick up for a moment as the jet circles to land and find him staring out the window as if nothing will ever catch his interest again. She doesn’t want him to look at her that way for the rest of her days – she can’t handle that loss of favor, not after being so vivid to him, and he to her.

_You stupid, little shit. I think I fucking need you more than I want you, and I want you all the damned time. And you have no idea, do you? But that could be all over now…_

They all deplane wordlessly and she shuffles to her car without looking up. She doesn’t call or text or drive to his place. And he doesn’t do any of those things either. Emily just curls underneath a mess of blankets on her big, cold bed and tries to muffle the finality that’s settling into her bones.

_But… I need you…_

\----- 

It’s Saturday night and she’s deep into the self-pitying segment of her almost-broken-up process. She’s _never_ gonna get another guy quite like him. They’re _never_ gonna recover their friendship from this. It’s _absolutely_ gonna make work suck. And it probably means that she’ll die alone like a bitter spinster out of Dickens because she couldn’t overcome her own emotional issues to duct tape this all back together. She’s a deflecting, emotionally constipated, loveless loser who’s thrown the best friendship she’s ever had on the bonfire of her own vanity. Bring on the wine and ice cream and twenty-seven cats.

It’s been four days since they got back from Dayton and they haven’t spoken to each other, not even at work. Everyone’s giving them the eye, but it’s all Emily can do to keep her head high and make it through each day sitting across from him while pretending that this silence is fine. She thought for sure that he’d make an attempt to reach out but that assumption turned out to be as inaccurate as all the others she made about him. Maybe his coldness when he hissed that he always knew she’d leave him was the truth at his core. Reid has a history of shutting people out when they do something he deems unforgiveable. Perhaps she’s now one of his ‘unforgiven’. 

Her vision starts to blur again and she wipes it away with a growl and an order to get herself more wine, when her doorbell sounds making her twitch. She barely recognizes the noise, that’s how few visitors she receives, and what does _that_ say about her success at interpersonal relationships? She pads to the door wrapping her nappy cardigan around her in protection, and doesn’t bother checking the peephole first. If someone’s come to kill her, they can try their luck and face the sight of her crappy sweater to boot. Reid’s on the other side when she opens it. His hair’s a mess, his eyes are red, and he looks like he’s slept in his clothes. He just blinks at her in the harsh lighting of the hallway for a moment, and everything from his posture to his silence seems wrecked to her. She has to bite her tongue to keep herself steady – the tears are just a stone’s throw away. _He’s HERE_ , her stupid inner girl cheers. He clears his throat, smoothes his wrinkled shirt once with his palm, and then dives right in.

“Are we over?” he whispers. She bites her tongue harder, but the heat in her face is rising and her eyes are starting to prick. “Because… I don’t want us to be over.”

Then she blots her face with the sleeve of her sweater and tells herself it’s only the glare from the hallway.

“Get in here. Stop putting on a show for my neighbors.”

He shuffles in and watches her close the door but refuses to go any further, his fingers worrying themselves in front of him.

“I… I really screwed up, Em. I’ve known you long enough… I should’ve trusted you.” He shakes his head like he can’t quite believe it. “I don’t know why I couldn’t let it go. That’s not me – that rabid, jealous idiocy – it really isn’t, but it happened and… I failed against it.”

“Spencer…”

“No, listen, I can do better if you’ll let me. I don’t want to be a guy who expects to fail at this… I want to believe that I am who you see. That guy with the ‘mighty heart’… I _want_ that…”

“Spence-”

“ _You’re_ what I want, and I don’t care if we only exist alone together away from the world. I’ll stand by and let others believe you have no one, and I won’t complain about being invisible if you’ll let me be your dorky best friend when it’s just the two of us, I promise…”

“Spencer, stop, stop.”

She rushes forward and silences his babbling with her lips. Her chest is already hitching. Dammit, there’s no stopping it now. His arms snap around her as his breath comes short. His frame is tense against her and he’s clearly confused, but he leans into the kiss with a wet moan that breaks her.

_Fuck, I’m bringing the duct tape. We’re putting this back together, I swear… I will NOT fail you and let you think it’s all your fault._

“I’m sorry…” she gasps when they break apart. His hand cups her cheek and his brows crease.

“What for?”

“God, Spence, I _denied you_. I denied all of this. I didn’t even think how you would feel about it, how it might hurt you. I didn’t give one, single thought to your history. You were right: I could’ve just told Hollis that I was seeing someone and left it at that. I could’ve told the world that but I didn’t.”

She takes a deep breath and gets real with him. “I’ve spent my adult life trying to anticipate what guys want from me, and how to avoid getting the short end of the stick. It’s always been about protecting myself – using them before they use me. That’s _my_ stupid history – the memory of someone who doesn’t deserve to take up so much square footage in my mind but does regardless. I painted you with that brush and didn’t even realize it, and that’s not fair. You didn’t earn that. It can’t be like that when you want to love someone. You have to give as much as you take…”

She kisses him again. He’s gone a bit dazed under her hands.

“That asshole who did a number on my head twenty years ago will not sabotage this now. You’re what I want too, Spencer. You made a mistake but so have I. I don’t want this to be over either. You make me crazy and you bring me joy, and I love that – all of it. I don’t want it to go away because of the stupid voices in our heads who tell us we don’t deserve this. You’re my best friend and I love you. If you make an effort to believe that, I’ll work on the vulnerability thing, I swear to fucking god.”

She’s inches from his face and he’s just blinking in shock at her. The silence of her condo wraps them up until all she can focus on is his rattled breathing hitching in and out of him unevenly. He seems… stuck, and she doesn’t know what to do.

“Please…” she whispers wetly. She doesn’t know what she’s pleading for.

“You…” He stops and swallows, eyelids stuttering as if he’s trying to wake up. “You love me…”

A breath gusts out of her and she sags forward, his lips brushing her forehead as his fingers slip up and tangle in her hair as he holds her. “Please…” she begs again. “This is hard for me. To admit that… I _need_ this much…”

His fingers tighten in her hair and his chest heaves against hers.

“I know that we have stuff we have to sort out. The privacy thing… you don’t understand how much I love it – I _love_ that it’s only us. I don’t want to share you with anyone, not even our friends. And that’s crazy because I’ve always fought against possession, and now that’s what I’m doing to you without giving you the right to do it back… it’s fucked up, so fucked up…”

His face slips until his cheek is pressed into hers, his lips brushing her ear. “What do you want, Emily? Tell me,” he whispers, and she shivers in his grip.

“I want us. I want to admit…” She breathes in suddenly and holds it for a second. “That this is serious for me and that… I hope it has implications for my future. Far-reaching implications.”

He shifts and his stubble rakes her cheek lightly. “I want…” He gulps before he continues. “To be yours. Not just your friend, but _all yours._ I don’t need to prove it to anyone, but I do need to feel it. Right down to my bones. It’s the only way I can think to fight off the irrational jealousy. I want to believe what you believe about us, Em. I really do.”

“How do we do that?” Her voice sounds small because she doesn’t have a plan for what he’s asking. Her fingers clutch at his wrinkled shirt and the warm solidness of him beneath it.

He shrugs and cuddles her as close as he can. After a moment, he begins rocking them gently. “We just try, I guess, sweetheart. We keep talking and we keep trying.”

Her chest swells painfully at his quiet statement, and she buries her face in his shoulder and just enjoys the motion of their swaying hug. His shirt gets damp under her face quickly, and one of his hands begins stroking through her hair in the way that hypnotizes her. She smiles at the hope he always seems to stir in her at the oddest moments; this isn’t the most optimistic moment she’s ever had, but it is a realistic one. And it makes her much more confident than she expects.

 _Duct tape and trying,_ she thinks. She’s been successful with a hell of a lot less.


	26. Chapter 26

She’s staring at him as he looks back at her, all blue-tinged from the late hour and barely outlined by the greyness of the sheets around them. She can’t look away, she doesn’t want to. It feels like they’ve been doing this for hours. She’s in love: it’s a fucking done deal. Now what?

“May I ask something… personal?” His voice seems rough, like he hasn’t used it in a long time. His fingers are trailing strange symbols into the skin of her arm, and she suddenly wonders if he’s imagining drawing on it. Like a tattoo…

“I think now would be an appropriate time,” she chuckles to cover how oddly vulnerable both his question and his hands have made her. He smirks back at her and tries to hide it in the pillow, shaking some tangles into his face which he then has to huff in order to flick away again. He’s dangerously adorable and he doesn’t even know it.

“Well, this might be too personal. I’d understand if it was. You can tell me ‘no’,” he mumbles and gets serious on her. “Would you tell me about the man… the one when you were twenty? I want to understand what happened to you.”

Oh boy. That is personal. But she kinda owes him; he’d offered the story of Simone so freely and no doubt he holds that pain just as closely as she does hers.

“Ummm…” She clears her throat and shuffles into the bedding, perhaps trying to hide away a little. But she’s _doing this_ \- she loves this guy. He has a right to know why she’s such a steaming mess about relationships. “His name was Martin. I always called him Marty, though.”

Reid settles in and waits, eyes wide, fingers endlessly circling her skin.

“He was a congressman. New to the job and the vagaries of D.C. society. I met him at one of Mom’s tedious embassy functions, and he was the only one there anywhere close to my age, even though he was ten years older than me. I was a bored, spoiled brat determined to make trouble, and he was just brash enough and ignorant of the world around him to be attracted by my recklessness.”

Her cheeks flame in the dark as she remembers teasing him into a coat closet just yards away from her mother’s ballroom, and making out with him like it was a game and he wasn’t a complete stranger to her.

“I didn’t know he was married in the beginning, and in truth, it might not have made a difference to me at that point. I was just horny and stupid, and he was convenient, and athletic and handsome and ivy-league smart… and it was sure to piss of Mother, which was the biggest draw of all.”

Reid doesn’t react to any of this, just watching and waiting for the tale to unfold. She sighs and feels the heat of her embarrassment spread across her body. It’s hard admitting such a thing to someone you admire and whose admiration you want in return. And she _really_ wanted it…

“It was the beginning of summer and I had nothing to do until college started again in the fall. He asked for my number at the party and I gave it to him not expecting him to remember me afterwards. But he called the next day and asked me to lunch. I agreed because I was curious; my only experience with men up until then were the sophomoric antics of teenagers. You know, the ‘yeah, whatever, babe’ dismissals and the stupid psychology of who calls whom when and what it implies. A man who just came out and stated what he wanted was refreshing, and Marty didn’t make me guess. He told me straight up at lunch in a fancy place in the middle of D.C. that he’d never met another woman like me and that he was fascinated. I mean, guys told me that they wanted to fuck me or that I was hot, but no one told me I was ‘fascinating’ before. No one ever suggested that it was _all of me_ that attracted them.”

She sighs loudly, and one of Reid’s hands drifts to her cheek, giving it a quick stroke as if to say _I’m here and I believe those things_ , and she knows he does. Much more than Marty ever did.

“He knew just what to say, and if I hadn’t spent all of my brainpower being puffed up by his flattery, I might have realized that a thirty-year-old man seducing a twenty-year-old woman was a lot less enchanting and a lot more possessive than I should’ve been comfortable with. I mean, it wasn’t a crime or anything, and I wasn’t a virgin, but my mind was young and I believed he was being sincere.”

She stops for a moment, falls under the sway of Reid’s fingers. Closing her eyes, she enjoys the minute tickling as his fingertips move across her. She wonders for a moment if this is his will or something he’s learned from another, and then she shakes the thought away, seeing it for the self-sabotage it is.

“We saw each other a lot that summer. I don’t think he got much work done because it always felt like he dropped whatever he was doing whenever I called. It made me feel powerful, like he was mine to control. It was powerfully sexual as well, that my charms could move him so easily – it turned me on… it was intoxicating.” She sighs again heavily. “Sometimes I wonder if he was as Machiavellian as that. Did he plan to give me that personal, sensual high? Did he know it would bind me to him better than anything? To this day, I still don’t know… All I know is that when fall came around and I was supposed to return to Yale, I didn’t want to go, and I thought was in love.”

Reid continues staring silently and she wishes he’d comment just to break up the confession. 

“I delayed – took a semester off. It pissed off Mom to no end, and I was shocked when Marty had the same reaction. I told him that I wanted to be with him, that I was considering transferring my credits to a nearby college instead, and he asked me why I would do such a thing. Then I told him I loved him, that he’d changed me, that all the guys I’d known before were nothing compared to him. I felt invigorated and whole and _different_ \- I lost that jaded defense that I’d developed as a teenager. I wanted to relearn the world with him, through him. I wanted whatever he wanted; I was losing myself in him. You see, the tables had turned – he had all the power, and I didn’t even realize it. I understood that I was young, but I was confident that we were meant to be together. Some star-crossed couple and all that shit… fuck, this is so unbelievably mortifying…”

His hands gather her closer. “Don’t do that,” he whispers. “Don’t let him make you feel ashamed for being young, not after so many years…” She kisses him quickly because it calms her. He always calms her a little…

“Well, to my horror, he broke up with me then and there, and it was fucking rude too. Harsh and insensitive – a side of him I’d never seen before. This wasn’t the man who claimed to be ‘fascinated’ by me, the man who came running whenever I wanted him. I was blindsided. Literally, I have no memory of how I left his townhouse. But I do remember getting blind drunk, stumbling to my Mother’s place being chased by her protection detail and then barfing my guts out in her bed of chrysanthemums.”

She almost feels the twisted wooziness and the rising bile in the back of her throat again. Then she sends out a quiet curse to the universe with Marty’s name all over it.

“Mom was enraged in a silent, put-together way that only she can pull off,” Emily chuckles a little though it isn’t funny. “And as she poured coffee into me, she demanded to know what disaster she’d have to clean up this time. Maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was my bleeding heart, or maybe it was because she was my mom and I wanted someone on my side, but I told her everything. When she made me tell her who he was, she glared at me and said _‘You silly girl. He’s married, you know.’_ But, of course, I didn’t. For the entire summer, we met at his townhouse or my crappy apartment, and there was never the slightest hint that he wasn’t single. I went over every interlude in my mind obsessively for weeks afterwards and never saw a clue. Then Mom, in an instance of devastating timing, explained that congressmen usually went back to their districts during summer break, but now that the fall session had begun, his family would be joining him in D.C. And _that’s_ when I found out he had kids…”

“Jesus…” Reid dips his head slightly as his grip tightens on her.

“I was just a fling and was always meant to be. When the summer was done, I was supposed to return to my out-of-state college, and his family would come to D.C., and it would be over. No harm done. But I didn’t follow the script. He never had any other intention, and there I was, declaring ‘love’ and screwing with his carefully laid plans. I’d fallen for this illusion of him that he’d put on so convincingly – I’d basically been fucking a stranger for three months. It was horrifying… I felt sick… the things I did with him, Spencer… Christ, it felt _so real_. How could I ever trust my instincts again after something like that?”

“Sweetheart…” he murmurs, but doesn’t say anything else.

“Shit went downhill fast after that. I kinda lost it for a while. I drank. I stalked his townhouse. Don’t ever tell Morgan that, but I did. I got really good at it too. Then, one night after I’d downed a bottle of gin, I crossed the goddamned line and broke into his place. Everyone was asleep, and I just stumbled around… I dunno, pretending it was _my home_ , I guess. I was extremely hammered. I ended up watching his kids sleep and one of them woke up and screamed. Then it got bright, and loud, and chaotic really fast. Marty yelled at me, threatened to call the cops and press charges, or worse yet – call my Mom. And I was crying, telling him how much I loved him, letting all sorts of intimate, soft shit fall out of me. And all he did was look as if I’d just peeled off my face in front of his family. He glared at me – and I’ll never forget this – he said that I didn’t know anything about him and to _grow up_ – like… it was nothing. I was nothing. A bauble that once dazzled but wouldn’t be put away now he was bored with it.”

And Reid suddenly pulls her into him with a grunt that smooshes her against his chest and makes her breath hot along his skin. But he still doesn’t say anything, so she plows through the rest of it with her eyes closed and her fingers gripping him for support.

“I became this hysterical, out of control woman because of him. It was everything I hated when I saw it in others. It was all the pitiful qualities that my Mother stood in direct contrast to. In that moment, I hated myself so completely… I don’t know what I might have done next. But then suddenly, his wife was next to me holding me up and hissing at her husband to get the kids back to bed, that she’d take care of this. And she drove me to my Mother’s. She didn’t even change – she did it in her bathrobe and slippers.”

Emily nuzzles into his chest and Reid makes a soft noise, as if he’s experiencing her broken moment right along with her twenty-year-old self. 

“I was freaking out the whole time – I guess I was starting to sober up. I figured she was going to pull off the road somewhere and threaten me. In the end, all she said was _‘You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. How do you think I met him? He cheated on his college girlfriend with me.’_ I remember looking at her in shock and having nothing to say. She just nodded her head. _‘You can do better, dear. He’s not worth ruining yourself over. I wish someone had told me that. Don’t ever let a man have power over you. Just take that wisdom from this shitstorm and run.’_ When she pulled into Mom’s driveway she gave me one last piece of advice and she was as cool as glass when she did it: _‘I’m not angry. I feel sorry for you. But don’t mistake that for acquiescence. If you come near him or my children again, I’ll kill you. Understood?’_ And I did understand. I almost hugged her I was so grateful. I never saw him again. I got my shit together and went back to school the following semester. And I never, ever gave a man a chance to make me that weak or gullible again.”

She’s shaking now, a low-level vibration that she can’t stop. He just holds her and breathes, hands broad and smoothing up and down her naked back as if he’s brushing the past off her. He doesn’t speak for ages, and then, simply says, “Thank you.”

“Spence,” she gasps, unable to withstand that kind of gentle understanding. “How did I let that happen? How did I allow a snake like Marty to steal twenty years from me? I mean, I’ve never had a relationship longer than six months. I’ve never come close to considering marriage. I’ve denied myself _children_ …”

He just shushes her. “I can’t answer that, Em. All I know is that I’m here, and so are you, and we’re doing what we can to make up for lost time. Both of us.”

“I wonder…” she gulps wetly after a minute of silence. “I wonder if… the secrecy of us that I love so much? What if… what if that’s an echo of the summer I had with Marty? What if I’m drawn to that, even though it was a lie? What if I’m trying to recreate it because I can’t escape this goddamned loop I made for myself? Or I’m trying to make it end differently?”

He sighs into her hair, keeps stroking her back. “May I tell you a story now?”

She rears back a little, cheeks wet and confused by his non-answer. She expects him to be concerned, or wary, but his expression is open, inviting her to sink down into the deep with him. And it shocks the hell out of her. She ends up nodding, wondering where he could possibly take them now.

“It won’t come as a surprise to you that when I was young, I didn’t have any friends,” he begins conversationally, still stroking her back, still radiating warm assurance. “Mom told me not to worry about it – that I’d get the hang of it in time – but with an accelerated aptitude, an absent father, and insanity in the house, the odds of that happening were slim. And to be completely frank, Mom’s never really had any friends either. We were the blind leading the blind…”

He takes a moment before continuing but when he does, his voice is just as even. It really is as if he’s reciting a story.

“I may not have been good with people, but I read all about them in books. Mom’s a romantic so she was always giving me these idealized, golden views of people. Scout and Duck from _To Kill A Mockingbird_ , Anne and Diana from _Anne of Green Gables_ , Tom and Huck from _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ … stuff like that. People who became loyal to each other forever. I wanted that so much. I didn’t even know if it was real or not, but I figured if so many books were written about it, well…”

Emily plants a tiny kiss across his chest as he speaks. _I’ll be your Huckleberry. Sorry it took me so long…_

“Mom would ask me what I wanted for Christmases and birthdays, and I’d always choose things like chemistry sets, or a Rubik’s cube, or more books, but deep down, all I ever wanted was a person from those pages I’d poured over: just one true friend. And I could never tell her that. It would break her heart that she couldn’t give that to me.”

“Spence…” she whispers.

“No,” he shrugs her quiet again. “This isn’t a sad story, I swear. Even though it starts out that way. So, I didn’t have anyone and I turned to my mind for comfort. For a few years that was fine. I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and the world I constructed with my fictional ‘friend’ was elaborate and satisfying. We had adventures together, we spent lazy days making tree forts or inventing secret languages, we told each other everything. And the strange thing was that the mental image of this friend changed – sometimes it was a boy, sometimes a girl – but the thing that remained consistent, the thing I craved was the understanding. I was never a child prodigy to this friend, I was never too weird, and when I needed them they were always there. It was almost perfect. If only it had been real.”

He shifts a little and when he settles again, her ear is next to his heart and his pulse is pattering rapidly.

“I grew up, went to LVNU, met Simone, eventually had Mom institutionalized…” he gulps quietly. “Retreating to a fantasy seemed childish after all of that. Life was… difficult, full of tough lessons, and I’d never met a friend like the ones I’d read about. I decided they didn’t exist and that it was up to _me_ to create my own safety through experience and insight into those around me. I got turned onto profiling, went to CalTech, and eventually came here, and this is the place where I first felt kinship of any kind. People with similar minds who respected me and admired my skills. It was amazing – it _still is_ amazing – but a part of me wouldn’t let go of that childhood fantasy. I’m ashamed to say that all the J.J.s or Morgans or Hotchs or Rossis in the world can’t fill that space inside me.”

He stops and his hand skims down to her cheek to draw her gaze up. When she meets his eyes, they seem impossible, dark wide pools of stark emotion that are too raw for a man who’s just admitted to using privacy as a cloak to shield him from others.

“I thought you’d end up being like them,” he continues haltingly. “I knew I liked you almost immediately when you arrived, and we became unexpected friends, but… then I started dreaming about my childhood friend again… and she’d become you.”

He waits. His heart is beating fast against her but she doesn’t know what to say to this. It feels… strange. How long has he seen her differently? How long has this been going on without her knowledge?

“I didn’t pay it a lot of attention in the beginning. I thought it was just the normal processing of memories – dreams aren’t very reliable insights, you know. But I kept having them and it was always you – a tomboy version of you who was miraculously the same age as the boy version of me, but, you nonetheless. That never changed.”

“What did we do together?” She surprises herself by speaking, and his eyebrows rise as well.

“Ummm… we’d read comic books together under a big, shady tree. Other times we’d look around for weird bugs. Sometimes we’d climb the tallest thing we could find and dare each other to go higher. I never fell and I never felt afraid either. We ate a lot of popsicles…”

“I haven’t had a popsicle in years,” she laughs quietly, thinking how great the mental kid-version of her sounds. She wonders if she was ever that cool when she was young.

“It didn’t really matter what we did, it only mattered that we did it together. I’d wake from these dreams and feel as though I’d stepped out of one of those books I loved so much. After a while and plenty of thought on the matter, I decided to see if my subconscious mind was telling me a truth after all.”

“And that’s when you challenged me about your tattoos,” she concludes, mind slightly blown. He nods.

“I never pictured _this_ ,” he gestures to the bed around them. “But I decided to… test my fears and see if that immutable brand of friendship could exist even though everything told me it didn’t.”

He shuffles down and snuggles until he’s almost brushing her nose with his.

“It turns out that it does, Emily. Even if we’d never come this far, you are the person I’ve been imagining my whole life. You’re the girl under the oak tree. Maybe Marty took something from you he had no right to. Maybe I was screwed when it came to friendships from the day I was born. But all these years later, here we are: you want to open yourself to someone, and I’ve discovered the loyalty I’d give my life to defend. Our hurts don’t have to own us, sweetheart. We can have our own tree if we want to.”

He leans in, eyes slipping closed in joy, and gives her the lightest, most breathless kiss. It’s barely anything, and it’s _everything._

“If we remain a secret, that’s fine with me,” he whispers when they part. “So long as it is because we choose it. Marty was hiding, he was ashamed – I am not. Remember that. I’ll defend and proclaim my friend until my last breath.” His expression shifts from something earnest to something a little cheekier. “Against pirates, space invaders, killers, douchebags… anyone.”

She chuckles brightly and suddenly. He’s such a dork. _Her_ dork. A little boy under a tree waiting for her… “Just not with your fists, okay? That was a little sad.”

He puts on a mock-scandalized look. “Morgan’s giving me lessons…”

She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh boy.” Then she kisses him soundly. “Our own tree, huh?”

“Yeah,” he pulls her close and grins like a fiend. “It sounds great, doesn’t it? It could be great…”

It really does. It sounds fucking fantastic.


	27. Chapter 27

One morning not long after he tells her about his mental oak tree, Reid wakes to find himself scrawled upon. He hears distant noises from his kitchen and assumes that’s where Emily has gone, but before she left she took a ballpoint pen to his arm. Under the tattoo of the child-him dangling from the moon is a copy of that drawing, but his child self is sitting under a fat, gnarled tree with a girl sitting next to him. They both have matching, simplified looks of happiness as they stare out from Reid’s skin.

He laughs in surprise, heart leaping around in him crazily, and traces the unsure lines with his fingers. After a while, he reaches for his pen and notebook on his bedside table, and begins to draw…

\-----

He disappears without telling her about it, and when he comes back, she can barely suppress the worry in her face.

“You’ve been gone two hours,” she hisses over their desk partition. “And you look… sick. Are you sick?”

“I’m not sick,” he murmurs. He does feel a little woozy though.

“Well, tell that to your face,” her eyebrows lower in judgment. “You’re all pale and sweaty. What’s going on?”

Clearly, he’s not covering this very well. He sighs, looks around, and then grabs her wrist. “Come with me.”

He leads them to File Storage again, and it feels like months since they’ve been in there together. He closes the door and turns to her. Her expression is beyond worried now that she no longer has to hide it.

“What is it?” she whispers.

“It’s fine, I swear. Please calm down.”

He pulls his tie loose and begins unbuttoning his shirt as her worry quickly gets replaced by shock. Her mouth drops open and she looks around even though they are alone in the windowless room.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I was gonna save this for later, but you’re ruining the surprise, so…”

He shrugs the fabric off his shoulders quickly to reveal the wide bandage across his chest. She rushes forward.

“You said you were okay! You leave mysteriously for two hours and come back injured?!?”

“Em,” he sighs and pulls her hands from the bandage. Then he peels the medical tape with care until he can pull the gauze away. Under it, his skin is rosy and inflamed, glossy from the aftercare treatment making the blacks seem blacker. It’s an oak tree with two children sitting under it, shoulders together, fascinated by a book they are sharing. One is a boy with glasses and a striped t-shirt, the other is a dark-haired girl with lop-sided pigtails and a skinned knee. The drawing is on his left pec, over his heart.

He hears her sudden breath and then must react quickly when her hand reaches out to touch it.

“Don’t,” he whispers with an apology in his voice. “It’s really prone to infection at this stage. Once it’s scabbed over, you can touch it.”

“It’s… it’s… what I drew…” she says in a stunned fashion that he’s unsure how to interpret. Was this too much?

“I, uh… I changed it a little. Made it more like the vision in my head, but… yeah.” He takes a deep breath. “Is it okay, Em?”

She looks up at him after a long, silent moment, eyes strange and unreadable. “You… you said… you were waiting for the right one…” She points to his chest. “To go there…”

“That’s right. And I did.” He leans a little closer, grabs her hands lightly and squeezes. “Is it okay, Emily?”

“A little too late to do anything about it now if it isn’t,” she says, and he feels his expression fall. Oh no. Maybe- “It’s beautiful, Spence,” she whispers before he goes too far down that rabbit hole.

“Really?” 

“Yeah, really,” she smiles and starts blinking too fast. “I’m honored.”

He quickly smoothes the gauze back into place and pulls her close for a hug. He’s grinning and he can’t stop; now joy is making him woozy. He probably looks like he’s going to drop dead or something. He’ll be fending off inquiries from his friends all afternoon.

“You know,” she murmurs against his shoulder. “If we ever break up, you’re stuck with me on you for all time.” Her tone is all sarcasm and patented Prentiss-sass. He’s not buying it for a minute.

“You’re my best friend,” he retorts. “I’m stuck with you anyway. Dumbass.”

He takes the risk and it pays off when she pulls away with a bark of disbelief and a sparkle of delight in her expression. She gives him an appraising once-over and then draws him in for a wet kiss. And he melts, just _melts…_

“Saucy,” she breathes approvingly when they part, and hands him back his shirt with a grin.


	28. Chapter 28

“Prentiss, daaahling…”

Emily looks up into the twinkling menace that is Penelope Garcia. The woman is positively radiating mischief, and Emily leans back in her chair with a squeak and a smile, trying to prepare for whatever her pal has in store for her.

“I know that look, Garcia. What have you done?”

“Nothing yet. But I’m gonna do something.”

Of course she is. Garcia winks at her.

“Word on the Bureau street is that you know how to salsa…” Garcia swivels her hips and makes a little ‘chicka-boom’ sound that catches Reid’s attention when his head pops up from his paperwork in surprise.

Emily laughs. At both of them. “Yeah, I’ve been known to be both sexy and graceful, while dancing backwards and in heels.”

Garcia keens with delight. “Excellent! Oh, you never disappoint, Ladybird… Well, this means that you and I are going to Club Havana on Saturday to cut a rug with some eligible men.”

Oh. Ummm… Reid doesn’t react at all.

“Listen,” Garcia rolls right over the moment. “We’re both single, and the holidays are fast approaching, and we need to get us some snuggle bunnies for the long, cold winter because I am NOT watching _It’s A Wonderful Life_ with Masters Ben  & Jerry on Christmas Eve again this year. Not this girl. I’m too fabulous and so are you. I want nooky and shortbread from Santa this year. And I want Santa to be a six foot, swarthy, cabana boy dressed in tinsel shorts.”

“Okaaaaaay,” Emily holds up her hands and tries to swat away Garcia’s vivid imagery. “Not gonna happen, P.”

“What’s not gonna happen?” Morgan suddenly appears at their desks with a grin.

“Penelope wants to go trawling for festive, immigrant boytoys.” It’s Reid who says it and everyone stares, then Morgan quickly laughs and slaps him on the back.

“What’s wrong with boytoys?” Garcia chirps. Morgan’s focus switches to her.

“I thought _I_ was all the boytoy you needed, Baby Girl.”

“Oh, if only, Chocolate Thunder,” Garcia coos. “But I’ve been trying to get you into tinsel shorts for years and you’re not having any of it. This goddess has _needs_ , Boo…”

Emily suppresses a laugh when she sees Reid wince a little at that statement. _Right there with ya, babe…_

“Well, my answer’s still the same, Garcia,” she says instead.

“Whhhhyyyyyyyy?” Garcia whines, looking pitiful. “I need a wingman… wingwoman… wing _person_ … and don’t try and tell me you’re okay with spending another festive holiday alone in your condo hiding from your mom.”

“Well, no, I’m not okay with that, but luckily that’s not a problem this year.”

“Oh yeah? Why not?” Garcia folds her arms over her chest.

“Because… I’m seeing someone.” Emily says it softly and her heart speeds up so quickly she gets lightheaded. Predictably, both Garcia and Morgan smell blood in the water and lean in for more.

“What?” Garcia gasps.

“Since when?” Morgan asks.

“It’s been a while now.”

“A while? How long is a while?” Garcia turns suddenly and pokes Reid in the shoulder. “Did _you_ know about this?”

“Of course he knew,” Morgan drawls. “They’re like peas in a pod. Wait… did you know back in Dayton? Is THAT why you got so bent outta shape?”

“Oh, my god,” Garcia clutches her chest and fake swoons. “So chivalrous…”

Emily starts to panic because it feels like it’s getting away from her. “Yes, Reid knew,” she blurts quickly, so he doesn’t have to make anything up. “But, ummm, anyway… there will be no Cuban club crawling for me.

“What’s he like?” Garcia flits.

“When do we get to meet him?” Morgan frowns.

“No one’s meeting him.” She forces herself _not_ to look at Reid and hopes he’s not hurt by her words.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s private, okay? He and I are… private.”

It stops all the questions and everyone ends up staring at her. She feels guilty for a variety of reasons.

“Listen, it’s the way we like it, okay? Please respect that.”

There’s a moment of silence and then Morgan steps forward and places a hand on her shoulder. “Of course, Emily. We’re just happy for you is all.”

“Yeah,” Garcia follows up, but still seems hurt at the loss of her man-catching partner. “We’d love to meet him… if you ever decide you wanna do that, okay sweety? We worry. Well, I worry, I guess… but maybe I don’t have to because Dr. Manners, over here has your back, don’t you?” She turns to face Reid, who just goes blank in response. “You’ll protect our girl, won’t you?”

“Always,” he clears his throat and says it again more forcefully, his spine straightening with resolve.

“Atta boy, Reid,” Morgan slaps him on the back again. “And we’ll get that left hook of yours into fighting trim, just in case it’s needed in defense of a lady.”

“Morgan, jeez…” Reid rolls his eyes and Morgan cackles, all teeth and twinkles.

And then they are alone again as Morgan and Garcia float away in a cloud of frustrated flirting, and the rest of the bullpen goes about its day. Emily rises and shuffles over to Reid’s desk, leaning back against it as he pretends to return to his paperwork. She braces her weight with hands on its surface, looking out over the pit full of working agents. A moment passes and then she feels his finger skim the outside of hers against the desk, and then it hooks around hers gently.

“Thank you,” he whispers, barely heard over the other conversations in the room.

She smiles, takes a moment to squeeze his finger between hers out of everyone’s sight before she stands and goes back to her desk to get on with her own reports.


	29. Chapter 29

The doorbell rings.

“Pizza’s here, babe,” she calls back, thinking that they almost didn’t make it. She’d have to make a mental note that fooling around _after_ you’ve ordered a ‘thirty-minutes-or-its-free’ pizza is a bit of a scheduling issue. The sweat had barely dried, and she was only dressed in one of his button downs, for chrissakes… “Spencer?”

There’s a muffled curse and a thud. Then, “I left money by the door.”

She feels a burst of mischief as she shrugs and opts to give the pizza boy a thrill. Grabbing the money with a grin, she swings the door open, thinking _this is how porn starts…_

Hotch is standing in the hallway doing his best impersonation of a robot.

“I’m not the pizza guy,” he deadpans.

OH SHIT. She loses all sense of decorum standing there in her co-worker’s shirt without any underpants. Hotch doesn’t do anything, doesn’t react, his eyes don’t even give her a once-over like almost every other man’s would.

“H-hello…” she offers weakly. “It’s… it’s late…”

“Yes,” he sighs and looks slightly bashful.

“Did I leave enough, Em?”

Reid suddenly appears in the doorway with her, hair in a massive tangle and dressed only in boxers. His expression becomes the perfect example of shock when his eyes land on Hotch.

“Hello, Reid,” Hotch launches into it, all business-like. “Sorry for the late hour, but I know you’re testifying in the Saunders case first thing tomorrow and I realized my supervisory case notes weren’t included in the State’s review package. I thought I’d run by my original copies so you could review them before you got on the stand.”

Hotch hands over a folder to Reid, who collects it numbly. Emily can’t breathe and she thinks for the first time in her life, she’d like to faint. Hotch seems to sense that conversation is not an option in this scene, and delicately presses onward.

“I apologize for not calling ahead. I clearly should have. Good luck tomorrow, Reid, though I’m sure it will be fine. Good evening to you both.” He turns to go and then adds, “I hope your pizza shows up…”

They watch him walk down the hall and disappear before Emily can find the energy to shut the door. Then she leans back into the plaster and exhales a slow, mournful, “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.”

“Maybe… maybe he won’t…”

“Maybe he won’t what, Spence? I showed up to the door _pantless_. And your hair practically spells out ‘sex’…”

She opens her eyes, pushes away from the wall, and that’s when she’s sees how panicked Reid is. Though it’s actually not panic, it’s full-blown terror.

“Hey, hey, babe… it’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out. C’mon on now, it’s Hotch, not Sauron…”

Her arms are around him and he’s breathing too fast, on the verge of hyperventilating.

“He saw… he saw…” he repeats over and over as his shaking increases.

“Saw what?”

“Everything… all of me…” he gasps.

She suddenly understands. Reid is practically naked – all his tattoos are visible, including his newest one, impossible to ignore across his heart. He had no control over the revelation of some of his most personal moments to an insightful observer. It took her months to see all of them. Hotch is a frighteningly good profiler – he’d only need a glimpse to piece a lot of Reid together, and now he has it. As well as their precious secret.

Emily clutches him closer and breathes kindness into his skin, his hair, his mouth. She uses everything she knows to calm him. It takes over an hour, and their pizza is cold when they finally get around to it. She keeps her fear to herself and focuses on him because that feels productive. She has no idea what they’ll face next in the office, but she knows that she won’t let anything there get in her way. Not now, not after all of this. If they lose their jobs, so be it. 

She won’t abandon her boy under the tree.

\----- 

Reid returns from a half-day of testimony and walks directly to their desks. He doesn’t say ‘hi’, or even drop his bags – he just stands there. When she meets his eyes, he doesn’t hide the panic from the previous night at all.

“So?” he whispers, eyebrows creasing.

“Nothing,” she shrugs.

“ _Nothing?_ ”

She lowers her voice. “We chatted over coffee this morning and everything. He acted like it never happened. Maybe we should too.”

“I can’t. I _can’t._ ” He leans hard against his desk and shuts his eyes tightly. Jesus. He’s gonna burn out something over this. She’s never seen him so worked up…

“Okay,” she stands quickly and grabs his arm. “I’ll go talk to him.” Reid looks up at her, obviously wondering if he can pull it together long enough to do this. She shakes her head. “Just me. I can do this, so let me, okay?”

“Okay,” he chokes down quietly. “I’m sorry, Em.”

She squeezes his arm. “Don’t be. I’ll be right back…”

She marches into Hotch’s office without knocking, no longer the stunned bunny she was the night before. He looks up, watches her shut the door and take a seat opposite him. His only reaction is the slightest curve of one eyebrow.

“Prentiss,” he greets with a nod.

She cuts right to it. “What are you going to do?” 

“About what?”

“Please don’t. He’s freaking out like you wouldn’t believe.” Her expression cracks a little. Hotch sighs. Then he picks up his phone and dials an extension.

“Reid, may I see you in my office please?” He hangs up and they both wait in silence. It takes a few minutes but Reid appears and Emily’s impressed that he looks less terrified, although he’s still too pale.

“Please sit,” Hotch offers, and Reid accepts, not looking at her. There’s another beat of silence and Emily wonders if she’s gonna have to start the conversation again when Hotch speaks.

“How long has this been going on?”

Emily goes blank, but Reid jumps right in like it’s an equation and he’s on a game show. “Eleven months, one week, five days, thirteen hours, twenty-seven minutes.”

She’s momentarily taken aback by the numbers. _Almost a year…_ And then she’s surprised he spoke at all. She stares at him and he glances back. Then he shrugs his shoulders and gives her a fondly exasperated _‘What?!?’_ sorta of expression. She waves him off, _You’re ridiculous_ , and when she looks back at Hotch his face has changed from buttoned-down-superior to muted surprise. She has no idea how to interpret that. He blinks and then looks away, clearing his throat.

“Are you living together?” he asks calmly.

She and Reid glance at each other. It’s her turn, she guesses. “We’re pretty much based out of his place,” she says. “But we still maintain two apartments.”

Hotch nods once. “I advise that you both obtain e-postal boxes, and have your bills and pay notifications sent there from now on. If your living arrangements should change down the road, it’ll take a little searching to figure that out.”

Now it’s Emily’s turn to blink in disbelief.

“Stay professional at work, keep it out of the office, and we won’t have an issue.” Hotch glances at them both. “That’s it. Get out of here.”

“What?” Reid breathes, then seems to understand it was aloud, and snaps his mouth shut.

“You aren’t… you aren’t gonna do anything?” Emily asks.

Hotch leans back into his chair and looks tired. “You’re adults, and it is a stupid policy. The job is hard enough. I have no desire to make it any harder on anyone.”

Oh god. She wants to hug him, but he’d almost certainly write her up for that.

“Thank you,” Reid says in a way that’s full and heavy, and turns her attention back to him. He’s leaning forward in his chair, his long fingers clasped until they turn white at the joints, and he appears a little watery.

Hotch looks him square in the eye. “There’s nothing to thank me for, Spencer. I saw nothing. I know _nothing._ ”

And that’s when she understands how insightful Hotch really is. Because he saw a fleeting glimpse of everything, managed to assemble it, read the terrain and outcomes, and then told everyone involved exactly what they needed to hear. Reid seems to understand this too and rises from his seat quickly, unable to subdue his gratitude for much longer. He nods and ducks his eyes, turning away and waiting for Emily to follow him. 

_‘Thank you’_ she mouths when Reid’s back is turned and Hotch lets a tiny smile slip from him. Then he goes back to his papers and acts as if they were never there in the first place.

They return to their desks and Reid sinks down into his chair with a sigh of relief. She smiles and takes her time settling in her own chair. When she looks over at him, he seems stunned, or daydreaming.

“See?” she says quietly. “Everything’s all right.”

“It’s… starting to be, yes,” he mumbles almost disbelievingly and then focuses on her. “It’s all beginning to be all right…”


	30. Chapter 30

Emily should’ve known that it wouldn’t be _that_ simple. Hotch can be… ironic. But the general consensus in the room when he suggests that they lure their UnSub by using Reid and Emily as bait – posing as a couple – is that he’s joking. Or lost his mind.

“What?” Morgan bursts indelicately.

J.J. keeps her mouth shut but her eyebrows practically disappear into her hairline. Rossi does the same thing.

“What’s happening right now? Is this for real?” Garcia chirps from the video link onscreen. “Are we serious about assigning Reid and Prentiss to go to Lover’s Lane to _make out?_ ”

Hotch holds up his hand to halt the discussion. “Morgan is too physically intimidating. We need the UnSub to feel confident enough to attack. Rossi’s too old. So am I. Prentiss has more tactical training than J.J., so if we send Reid in, he needs a strong partner. It’s either this or we pick from the local pool of agents for this op. Is anyone more comfortable with that scenario?”

Everyone shuts up after that. Emily glances at Reid and he looks green.

“Then it’s settled,” Hotch murmurs and dismisses the room. Emily and Reid remain but neither of them say anything. Hotch stares them both down. “Will this be a problem for you two?”

“I don’t know…” Emily says cautiously, glancing again at Reid who won’t look at her. She’s not squeamish about undercover work – god knows, she’s done far more difficult things in the name of a case – but this may be the first time her personal life could be impacted by it.

“Would you prefer it if one of you were paired up with a stranger?”

“No,” Reid says conclusively. “We’ll be fine, Hotch.”

“Great,” Hotch huffs. “Now that the decision’s been ratified by committee, perhaps we could go catch a murderer…”

Hotch marches out into the squad room leaving them alone. She watches Reid carefully for secret signs that he’s freaking out, but there’s nothing but this scary sense of determination buzzing in the air around him.

“Are you okay?” she asks quietly.

He stands and follows Hotch out into the police bullpen. “Let’s do this,” is all he says back.

\---- 

_“Jesus, Reid, loosen up a little,”_ Morgan murmurs across the earpiece. 

Like he doesn’t already know that, like Emily’s body language isn’t practically screaming the same thing at him as he handles her like a side of frozen beef rather than a lover. If he had a mic on him, he’d be tempted to tell Morgan to shut up – it’s not helping – but then Hotch does it for him.

_“Quiet on comms, please. Essential reports only.”_

“C’mon, babe,” Emily whispers against his neck as she tries _again_ to make their outdoor assignation look both spontaneous and passionate. “We can do this. Just pretend it’s us, no one else.”

He barks an unamused laugh at that, but pulls her closer anyway. His breath clouds in the winter air around them. It’s too cold for this, perhaps too cold for the killer to be out hunting in the first place, and it’s not helping with ‘the mood’. He’s freezing, shivering from both the thinness of his peacoat and his tension.

“I can’t feel my fingers or toes,” he mumbles as he slides a hand into her hair for warmth more than anything else. “Our colleagues are watching _and_ critiquing us, and we’re waiting for an unstable killer to leap out of the bushes to stab us to death. You’re lovely, Em, but that’s a lot of background noise to ignore.”

She laughs too and it floats around them in the weak lamp light warming them for an instant. They aren’t mic’d so their conversation is the only thing about this scene that’s private. He pulls back a little and sees the way the lines around her eyes crinkle as she genuinely smiles, and it makes him smile back. The tip of her nose is rosy and her cheeks are pink. She’s honestly stunning even in this manufactured situation. He wishes it was because of him and not the cold. He cups her face and he’s immediately warmer where they meet.

“I’m freezing too. This would be a terrible date if it were real,” she smirks.

“Noted for future reference,” he grins and she leans in to kiss him but he pulls back again, heart suddenly in his throat that everyone will _see_.

“Spence…”

“How am I supposed to do this?” he hisses in frustration. “I have to be convincing enough to lure a killer, but not so convincing that it appears obvious that we’ve been doing this for nearly a year behind everyone’s back. I mean, truthfully, I nearly had a breakdown trying to work up the nerve to do this the first time, Emily.”

“I know, I know. I get it…” she soothes, wrapping her arms around him so they at least look intimate from a distance. “But this is sorta what you wanted, right? You don’t want to hide us forever.”

“But not _like this,_ Em. C’mon…”

“Yeah, but do you think it’ll be less nerve-wracking when we do it for real?”

That stops him dead in his shivering, uncomfortable, frustrated tracks. She said ‘when’, not ‘if’. He can’t breathe for a moment, and he needs to breathe because there’s probably a killer lurking out in the undergrowth somewhere. She watches him blink as if it’s the most entertaining thing they’ve done all evening, and then she curls a hand around his and raises it to her lips. She blows on it first, sending tiny prickles of warmth across his skin, and then she gently kisses it. He leans in, close enough that he can feel her heat radiating back to him, and he watches with fascination as she flips his hand, breathes across his palm and kisses it. She repeats the process again and again – his knuckles, his fingertips, the sensitive spot between his thumb and forefinger – and she does it with such stillness, such aching attention that he forgets the cold, forgets the eyes following them, and even forgets the killer they’re supposed to be tricking. 

He leans forward by the barest of margins until his lips brush hers, eyes slipping shut and just tasting her on the frosty, night air. He feels her fingers tangle through the ones she’s just lavished with attention, and curl them into their chests. He sighs quietly, takes her mouth, and tries to show the same attentiveness and care. This is the best thing about being with her: the way he can lose himself. It means he trusts her. It means that she helps to quiet his mind. It means that this is the freest he’s been, moment to moment, in his entire life, and he _needs_ it more than he ever imagined he would. He pulls her closer, and she opens up to him. It’s still more tender than passionate, but he suspects no one will criticize that. She’s pressed against him and shivering, but she’s dressed more appropriately than he is, so he gets a quiet thrill when he considers that she might be shivering because of him instead. The idea makes him moan gently, and she twists in response, getting more eager, and they both curl into each other to hide away from the outside world. God, he loves that, loves the way they both want to shut out everything but them… 

A loud, uneven moan floats around them – something painful – and he breaks away from her wondering what he’s done wrong.

“Em?”

 _“Shit! Reid, seven o’clock, coming in fast!”_ Morgan barks across the mic.

He jumps and then swivels to face the dark shadow that’s racing towards them with a blade. The moan becomes a scream, breath streaming in the air behind him as he runs at them both. Orders are being yelled across the mic that aren’t for either of them; they are weaponless. There’s a glint of metal in the lamp light and Reid steps forward to close the distance and maybe disarm him. Failing that, he’ll come between the murderer and Emily. It’s the least he can do.

Then he’s roughly pushed aside and he hears a sharp gasp. Emily’s next to him, but he doesn’t turn to look; he just reacts. Throwing himself at the suspect, and with one hand clasped around the guy’s knife hand, Reid puts as much momentum as he can into a right hook to the guy’s jaw, using a down angle and pulling from his shoulder just like Morgan taught him. The suspect cries out and stumbles, confused by two fighting victims. He struggles and then tries to swing his knife wide enough to catch Reid, but Reid hits him again, and again, until they both sink into the snow together. Then Reid’s straddled over him fighting to free the knife with numb fingers, his right fist throbbing so much that he’s sure something must be broken.

“Stop!” the guy shouts. “It’s a sin! It’s a sin! Just let me finish…”

“Stay down!” Reid bellows in a way he’s never done before. His breath is coming too shallowly and his vision is beginning to narrow the way it did when he struck Hollis in Dayton. He’s vivified by a tremendous urge to subdue this threat and to do it physically, which doesn’t feel like him at all. Once again, he’s scaring himself with his own violence. He leans his whole body down into the suspect and wills himself to stay focused. “FBI! You are under arrest! Don’t struggle or you’ll hurt yourself…”

“Reid!”

He looks up and Hotch is there, gun drawn on the suspect. They are all there: Morgan, J.J., Rossi…

“Here,” Hotch tosses Reid his cuffs, and Reid wrestles with the still-screaming suspect until he’s yelling face down in the snow with his hands secured behind his back.

Reid sags away and then gets up as Hotch holsters his gun and swoops in the hoist the guy onto his feet again. “You okay?” he mutters as he brushes next to Reid. Reid nods but can’t find his voice; he’s too busy trying to choke down the animal need to destroy the man who came at someone he loves…

“Prentiss…” Hotch murmurs quietly while manhandling the suspect.

For a second, Reid’s too stunned to understand what Hotch means. It’s as if ‘Prentiss’ isn’t part of his language. Then the adrenaline pounding in his throat, hands and eyes surges to a new, fiery high and shouts _‘EMILY’_. He dodges around Hotch and finds Morgan crouching next to her where she’s still sitting in the snow. She looks up at him, face pale, expression neutral.

“Good job,” she huffs. But it’s not right – something’s off. He looks her over and she’s clutching her abdomen. Red is seeping between her fingers. He can’t breathe. He’s moving and stumbling and in the snow next to her on his knees but he _can’t breathe._

She sees it and shrugs it off. “It’s fine. He glanced me. The coat got the worst of it.”

“No…” he gasps but it barely makes a sound without air.

“Paramedics are thirty seconds out, Reid,” Morgan rumbles, supporting Emily’s back with his hand. “They are with our fleet vehicles. Be here in no time. Our girl’s gonna be fine, Slugger. Speaking of which, those were some solid hits, man. Glad to know you’ve been paying attention.”

Morgan’s grinning at him and Reid doesn’t understand the expression in this context. Emily’s _bleeding in the snow_ , and Morgan is smiling. Everyone needs to be moving quicker… Why isn’t there any urgency?

“Defense of a lady,” Emily snorts and chucks Reid on the shoulder, which makes him jolt as if she’s touched him with a cattle prod. He stares at her like she’s lost her mind. _What is happening?! Has everyone gone nuts?_

“Pretty impressive lip lock action too, I gotta say…” Morgan continues. “What did you think about that, Prentiss?” He wiggles his eyebrows as he holds her and Reid wants to shove him into the snow. Firstly, he’s acting crazy. Secondly, he shouldn’t be comforting her – that’s _his_ job…

Prentiss rolls her eyes at Derek. “Defense of a lady,” she huffs again with great sarcasm. Suddenly, he’s angry at _everyone._

“Where are the paramedics?” he snarls too loudly, and Emily turns to face him with concern and muted caution. Then she reaches out her free hand and clutches his peacoat, as if she’s trying to anchor him to reality and restraint and all the things that he can’t marshal in this moment.

“Right here,” Morgan says with his own look of concern, and the EMTs appear as if by magic. 

He feels himself breathe again and sags into the snow. He’s at arms-length from her, with her hand still grasping his sleeve, but Morgan is crowded around her protectively, and it’s killing him a little to see it. He wants to push everyone aside. He wants to soothe her. He wants everyone to know that _he_ can take care of her.

The EMTs do a quick evaluation as Emily hisses, then they declare her fit enough to walk back to their rig with them.

“She’ll need stitches,” one of them says to Hotch and he nods. He’s handed off the screaming would-be murderer, but Reid can still hear him yelling about God and sin in the distance. Morgan stands with Emily and begins to help her to the ambulance with the EMTs, but Hotch intervenes.

“Morgan, I need you here. We have to get a statement from this guy if we can. Reid can go with Prentiss.” His tone is authoritative and brooks no refusal. He turns away without looking at Reid. Morgan blinks for a second and then nods waiting for Reid to replace him at Emily’s side.

“Look after our girl,” Morgan smirks as Reid slides in beside her. Reid wants to snarl at him but has enough control back to duck his eyes and nod instead.

_She’s MY girl…_

He really needs to get a handle on this.

They get settled into the back of the ambulance, which is blissfully warm, and soon Reid’s fingers come alive with pins and needles that tell him how cold he actually is. One EMT shuts them in and then sits next to Emily, peeling away the gauze she’d hastily wrapped her in outside, and she hisses again when it comes away bloody. Reid clasps Emily’s hand without thinking, raises it to his lips and breathes across it as she had earlier. No doubt she’s cold too and perhaps too shocked to notice. She stops hissing and looks to him, her studied expression melting into something tender and worried, just for him.

“You okay?” she whispers as the rig creaks and shifts around them.

“Am _I_ okay? You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. You looked like you were gonna kill someone back there.” She squeezes his fingers. “I’ll be fine, babe. I promise. Please try to calm down.”

The EMT stops what she’s doing and looks back and forth between them. “Are you two… together?” Reid can’t look away from Emily and Emily makes an affirmative shrug and then winces at the movement. The EMT places more gauze over Emily’s seeping wound along her abdomen and presses, then she turns to face Reid.

“Your wife will be fine, Agent. It’s superficial but she’ll need some stitches. That’s why we’re going to the ER. She’ll be discharged in a few hours though.”

Reid’s gaze locks on the EMT who is smiling at him kindly. All he can do is stare. _Wife?_

“See, Spence? Nothing to worry about.” Emily doesn’t correct the paramedic and when Reid looks back at her she’s smiling her crinkly smile for him. Her hand squeezes his even tighter.

 _Wife._ The word has pushed every other thought out of his head. Could that be something he could have? Is it something she’d ever want? The idea that they could have what they do now for the rest of their lives intoxicates him; his anger drains out of him as if it never existed, and he’s left with nothing but awe at this possibility. Their relationship is already the longest and most successful he’s ever had in his life…

“You were really great tonight,” Emily continues as the whole rig shifts taking a corner. “I mean, you took that guy down and you didn’t even have a weapon. It was frightening to watch, but also incredibly impressive. I tried to get between you and him, but I guess you didn’t need my help after all.”

“I always need your help,” he whispers. “And I was terrified.”

She chuckles gently. “Well, it didn’t look that way, and that’s what counts. That, and the fact we got him. You were uncomfortable tonight and you fought yourself to do the job. It was extraordinary, hands down. You constantly surprise me, Spencer.”

She’s still laughing like he’s performed an amusing trick or something, but all he can think about is getting her home and safe, and trying to work up the courage to believe that he could impress her like that for a lifetime.

He swallows hard and kisses her fingers. “I can take care of you, you know…” he breathes across them. She stops laughing. He looks up. Her gaze has turned inexpressibly gentle and huge on him.

“I know you can,” she whispers.

The ambulance bumps along the road, the EMT shuffles around for more medical tape, and Reid’s heart lodges in his throat as he stares and begins sketching out a plan to take care of Emily Prentiss forever.


	31. Chapter 31

It’s Christmas Eve and they’ve skipped out on a party at Garcia’s in favor of making a nest of blankets on Reid’s sofa and watching _The Grinch Who Stole Christmas_ and lip sync-ing along with the dialog together. It is the best. Well, it’s almost the best – the only way it could be better is if Reid’s place had a fireplace to make it all extra snuggly. But barring that, Emily thinks this is _the best._

She curls into his chest a little more as he sings _‘You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch’_ even though the scar on her stomach complains as she does it. The stitches came out a week ago, but it’s still sore and ugly. Reid’s been extra careful around her since it happened and they haven’t had sex since the takedown at Lover’s Lane. She wants him to touch her again, for things to go back to normal and for her not to be something fragile in his eyes. Spending time together is wonderful, but there’s so much more to them than that. He said he could take care of her; she didn’t think he’d be so literal about it… 

She thinks maybe he’s scared. They are coming up on their first anniversary, and the roleplaying in the park was the first time she’d ever been in danger around him (but she wasn’t _really_ in danger – that’s just his perception), and then there was the EMT’s comment about them being married which appeared to shut his brain down for a while. Maybe he’s taking a step back to consider things. But they were in a good place, weren’t they? Surely, he wouldn’t end it now after all the work they’d done to keep it together.

Suddenly she feels less festive than a moment before. She pushes up from the couch and he stops his singing in mid-lyric.

“Is it that bad?” he smirks. His singing is truly awful and he’s aware of it.

“No,” she smiles back. “Just getting more cider. Want some?”

“No thanks.” He snuggles down into the blankets again, perfectly content. 

She’s being hysterical and twitchy – there’s nothing wrong and she needs to stop _looking_ for things to go wrong. She’s doing that thing again where she’s trying to anticipate pain in order to avoid it. He wouldn’t do that. He won’t hurt her; she _knows_ that.

She shuffles into the kitchen and pours more cider from the pot where it warms on the stove. She tells herself to cowboy up and quit being such a flaky female, quit ruining the best holiday she’s had in years. This love business is turning her into two, separate women and they seem to go to war with one another more frequently than she’d like. She just wants the one who loves Reid to win and banish the other, neurotic one permanently.

Walking back to the living room something flickers at the edge of her vision. She veers towards the bay window that faces the street and draws up the blind. 

“Oh…”

The tv goes silent behind her.

“What is it?” he asks.

“It’s… snowing,” she whispers with a child’s delight. She’s never lost her love of snow. It’s drifting gently in the lamp light, twinkling in and out of view as it swirls from the darkness above to the cars and street below. The windows aren’t open but she can imagine the muffled hush that’s fallen over the city, cars shushing slowly through the newly-covered streets and people hustling to get home and dry. “Lovely…”

His arms wrap around her waist as he pads up behind her and pops his chin on her shoulder to watch the scene. She closes her eyes for a moment and leans back into the warmth of him. He clutches her closer.

“It’s unusual for D.C. to get snow before January. It’s too warm,” he murmurs.

“It’s perfect,” she says, tracing her fingers over his arms. “In Connecticut, we always had snow for Christmas. Somehow it doesn’t feel quite right without it. Even all those years I spent living somewhere else, I always secretly hoped for snow…”

“Well, I arranged it just for you,” he chuckles and gently kisses her neck making her shiver.

“Master of the earth and air now?” she giggles back, one hand rising up to curve around his neck. He leans into her harder, hair tickling her cheek, his breath warming her neck and drifting over her collar bones. His arms tighten around her and it feels… possessive for the first time since her injury. She presses back into him even more to tell him she welcomes it, and when she does, she smiles, feeling his interest. _Thank God…_

“Anything for you,” he whispers. “I love you, Emily.”

She freezes for a moment, caught between joy and disbelief. “That’s the first time you’ve said that.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then, “It’s not the first time I’ve thought it. I’ve been thinking it every time I see you for more than a year.”

She turns in his arms and cups his face. His cheeks are warm under her fingers and his eyes keep looking and then ducking away as if he’s embarrassed. 

“Silly to wait, I guess,” he chokes out quietly. “I was… scared that you’d grow out of your feelings for me.”

“ _Grow out_ of them? You’re not a pair of old jeans, Spencer.”

“Huh, yeah,” he tries to shrug it off and somehow that breaks her heart more. “I didn’t want to look like a hopeless sap if it happened though.”

Emily growls and captures his mouth. “If I ever meet Simone in person, I’m gonna beat the hell outta her for teaching you that.”

He kisses her back, hard, as if the thought turns him on a little. But then he gasps, “I’m sure I would’ve ended up this neurotic without her.” 

His hands tangle in her hair as he pulls her in for another heated kiss. The cider has made her dizzy and now he’s making the room spin with his intensity. She remembers how he’d shocked her with that during their first time together, and even now he can still surprise her with it. She gets the feeling that she’s only scratched the surface of him, and that excites her. She bows forward, feels him respond, and listens to him moan when he lets himself go. She loves that – the way he drops his defenses and just _is_ with her. Christ, no one’s ever trusted her like that before… Then he pulls back with a gasp, leaning against her forehead and wobbling to keep them steady.

“That night on the case in the park, I scared the hell out of myself.”

“What do you mean?” she huffs.

“I felt… physically possessive of you. Not just when we were attacked, but after as well. I wanted to push Morgan away from you and into the snow…”

She laughs a little because, come on, that’s a funny image. He doesn’t seem amused though.

“It’s not okay, Emily. It feels… wrong and beyond my control. I’ve never had to deal with this before. I know I don’t have a right to feel… _ownership…_ ”

It’s not the sort of thing she would ever encourage. In fact, she’s spent most of her adulthood avoiding it. But something in her winds a fraction tighter to hear him admit to this. She remembers how he told her he wanted to be _hers_ , and now it seems she wants the same thing back. That’s less possession and more of an offering, isn’t it? It’s less egregious if it’s of your own free will… There’s obviously something about them – beyond the friendship – that has seeped under their skins. It’s something more volatile and dangerous than she expected, and the reckless part of her has always been helpless against _danger._

“Spencer,” she grabs the collar of his t-shirt and pulls him in until their lips brush. “You have a right to things. You’ve earned them. I have as well. Is it still wrong if we both feel it? If we both _want_ it? This is pretty fucking serious and we both know it. We’re just afraid to admit it out loud. Aren’t we?”

He gasps and she feels his fingers bite into her. His eyes slip closed and his mouth hovers over hers, breath rattling unevenly out of him as they sway in one another’s orbits. It’s crazy how much yearning still exists between them almost a year later. She wonders if it’ll ever feel ‘routine’ to her, and secretly prays that it never does.

“Em,” he whimpers almost painfully before nipping her lower lip. “I never thought I’d… need someone this _violently…_ ”

“Take me to bed,” she whispers before she claims his mouth again. “Show me the possession that frightens you, and I promise you’re not alone. I’ll reveal mine as well.”

Then his hands are everywhere, mouth moving in hot, urgent pulls across her and down her throat. His arms have collected her up in a vice grip and he moans against her, perhaps still feeling guilt for the desires he can’t control.

“You feel… p-possessive of me?” he hiccups as they stagger in the general direction of the bedroom. His question lights her like a fuse, making her white hot and sparking everywhere.

“Babe, I want to erase the memory of any other woman you’ve ever been remotely attracted to.” She bites his lips and then he presses into her until she opens up to him. “I’m not proud of the impulse, but it’s real and it won’t go away.”

They stumble into the doorframe and then he twists and pins her there with the length of his body as he sucks a hard, sharp mark into her neck. She gasps and keens against him, trying to curl closer, trying to climb him. He’s hard all over and it’s all she can think about. Maybe he’s two people as well: the boy under the tree, and _this…_

“This… could be… seen as… obsessive co-dependency…” he bites across her. “Not very… healthy…”

“Do you want to stop?”

“Ridiculous.” He shoves them both into the bedroom and staggers them to the bed until she tips backwards and bounces on the mattress. He stares down at her in the dim light, but even she can see the hunger he’s given himself over to. She never imagined being with a friend would be like this…

“There’s no stopping,” he husks quietly. “How do you stop love like this once you’ve started it?”

And she melts. His statement comes out of him with such genuine awe that it reminds her of the friend she loves, not just the danger she craves like a mindless pervert. She rises up on her elbows and smiles, whispering a _‘c’mere’_ as he sinks to his knees and takes his time kissing and undressing her with care. 

The care was something he promised her, and he keeps his word, even lavishing affection on her newest scar – licking and tracing it as if it’s her most beautiful attribute. He is meticulous, outlining every inch of her with his fingers while she squirms for more, breathing beautiful things into her back, her neck, her breasts – things that would make him blush in daylight. She twists and whines, begs for more, faster, more… He makes her mindless so easily and then refuses to be rushed. She hates it and thinks it makes her the luckiest woman alive simultaneously. She might have said so out loud because he begins to laugh at her gently just before he sinks between her thighs. He brings her joy with his mouth first, then his hands, and finally with a reckless enthusiasm that breaks him as well. He’s silent when he comes, face rosy, hair damp and tangled from where she’s manhandled him, and she pulls him close and cries as he lets the last part of him go inside her. Outside the snow keeps falling, makes the world quieter, closer, as if just for them. It’s perfect – a moment that will live brightly in her mind no matter what. When he collapses into her, sticky and heaving and boneless, the fear that’s ruled their adult lives drains away. They are thread through each other, limbs tangled, fingers gripping until they turn white, and words tumbling out in wet, grateful gasps.

_Didn’t know it could be like this… Felt guilty for wanting it so much… You have me – all of me – you know that now, right? … You make me so happy… This is all I want, THIS… Live with me… We already do… No, I mean for real – stay forever, make us your home, please… We’ll have our own tree?... Yes, YES, always, no matter what…_

The night turns to morning and Christmas Day is carols on the radio, French toast and coffee in a warm kitchen, and snow across the city that makes everything as clean and perfect and new as they feel. When they make a blanket fort in the living room and he draws strange things on her skin as he regales her with stories of pagan seasonal rites and dark Krampus tales, she tells him she loves him, and this time it is with the full force of her history vanquished behind her. The skinny dork with the glasses defeated her demons, and it is the fucking _best._


	32. Chapter 32

Something is happening. He just doesn’t know what it is.

Emily’s been acting weird all week. Not ‘leave-me-alone’ weird, but weird nonetheless. At Christmas he did something spontaneous and asked her to move in with him, and despite his panicked doubts about both it and her acceptance, she moved her stuff in within two weeks and put her condo on the market. He was deliriously happy, but now he’s wondering if she’s having second thoughts. Maybe that fight they had about her bathroom routine was more serious than it seemed. Or maybe his fastidious kitchen organization is _actually_ a deal-breaker for her. After all, he’s under no illusion that habitually color-coding your cupboard contents or making all the labels face out because it’s _the only way it can be_ is anywhere close to normal. Maybe he really does have too many action figures…

She seems sorta… somewhere else, and he thinks a month into co-habitation is far too soon for that kind of apathy to take hold. He tries to make everything perfect: buys the foods she likes, makes the bed the way she prefers, tries not to be too clingy. But his stomach twists when her eyes slide away from him, or when she smiles in a way that doesn’t come close to the crinkly one he loves and she tells him ‘everything’s fine’. He’s done something wrong. He’s screwed it up and she’s going to leave as soon as she can figure out a way to do it without tearing his guts out. What happened? What did he _do?_

He sits across the desk from her and watches her writing her report. She looks tired – there are circles under her eyes that she’s done her best to cover with make-up, but he knows they’re there. He wants to tell her she can move back to her place if she wants, just don’t end it. They can live apart – he can handle that. He just can’t handle losing her. She glances up and catches him staring. She smiles and nods in his direction.

“S’up?”

“Are you okay?” He says it quietly, leaning forward to keep it between them.

“Sure,” she huffs and gives him a look that says he’s imagining things. But the lines around her eyes suddenly get tight. She thinks he doesn’t notice these things.

“You don’t seem okay.”

“How do I seem?” she says defensively. He takes a breath.

“You seem… sad.”

Her expression goes slack and she gets pale. He sits straighter when it happens because it’s so sudden. He reaches for her hand but she pulls away. It isn’t panicked, it’s more like an afterthought.

“I’m not sad,” she whispers.

“Then what is it? Please tell me. I want to help. Something’s wrong, I-”

“Nothing’s wrong.” She stands quickly and then blinks a lot, swallowing hard. Then she walks away without another word.

If he had any doubts about her weirdness, that puts a stop to them. 

It goes on for two more days, and they don’t talk about it when they are alone. Reid can’t eat and barely sleeps. His guts are sour and it feels as if he’s always on the verge of a panic attack. It can’t go on. She needs to be honest with him if she’s unhappy. She owes him that much. They owe that to each other. She’s not handling it any better. She keeps disappearing without notice, and then looking pale and shaky when she returns, sinking into her seat as if she can’t stand for another minute and avoiding his eyes.

A warm snap happens and he sees his opportunity. He takes her gently by the wrist at lunch time one day and says, “Come with me. Bring your coat.”

The Christmas snow has melted even though it’s only the end of January. There will be plenty more before the winter’s done, but today it’s almost spring-like. He takes her to their postage-stamp of grass – now brown and crispy underfoot – and produces a lunch he’s made for her. She smiles cautiously and handles the food like it’s radioactive. He sighs and tries to eat his beside her. She looks out over the salt-stained cars in the parking lot and her eyes glaze as they seem to do all the time now. His start pricking: he’s losing her and he doesn’t know how to stop it. He almost had everything. Almost…

“Please talk to me, Em…” he whispers. “I can’t bear this. Whatever it is… just say it.”

She doesn’t react, doesn’t move. She barely even blinks. Wind whips across the lot and twirls her hair, but even that doesn’t interest her. The silence stretches between them as he watches her and she stares at absolutely nothing. Then she looks down at the still-untouched food in her lap, and sighs.

“I’m pregnant.”

For a moment, the words don’t make any sense to him. It’s as if they are in another language. Then slowly, they melt down past his surface into the density of his consciousness, and there they create a chemical reaction that makes them big and bright and loud. 

**BABY.**

He flushes. He feels dizzy. It’s cold out but he wants to strip out of his coat and run around.

He’s frightened.  
He’s excited.  
He’s immeasurably proud.  
And he’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

He reaches out and strokes the edge of her hand with a fingertip. Her eyes flick down at the touch, and then up to his face. She’s no longer listless – it’s apprehension there now. Exhaustion, worry, fear… His hand curls around hers and he smiles, big and toothy. He doesn’t care if it makes him look crazy. Perhaps he is.

“Good,” he says quietly, squeezing her hand. “I’m glad.”

She blinks at him. It’s almost like a stutter. “G-good?”

He nods. “Uh-huh.”

She just keeps blinking, and it gets faster and faster. He leans forward and adds his other hand to the first around her fingers.

“I want whatever you want, Em. But my opinion on this is: good.”

She sags into him, pressing her forehead into his shoulder, and starts sobbing. Huge, wet gusts tearing out of her and sounding so painful that he shifts and wraps her against him. He doesn’t care if anyone sees; his only purpose is to make this better.

“Shhhh, sweetheart, please don’t cry… please…”

“You want it…” she hiccups.

“Of course I do.” He sounds more shocked than he intends. Why would she think he wouldn’t? “I love you. I love us. This baby is a part of us. Why wouldn’t I want it?”

“It’s not… part of the plan.” She leans away, wiping her nose. “It took us a year to get this far, and we keep stumbling… now, we’re gonna try to be parents? How the hell is that gonna work? And we’ll get fucking fired…”

“Who cares about the job, Em?” He cups her face and forces her to look at him. “Seriously, c’mon. I’d never pick the Bureau over a chance to have a family. I love my job but it barely registers compared with how I feel about you.”

She looks at him as if he’s speaking in tongues. He recognizes that this is a moment when he cannot fail to express himself adequately – she _needs_ this.

“Emily,” he whispers as he leans his forehead against hers. “You told me once that you had denied yourself the chance to have children. To me that suggests you wanted a family but resigned yourself to missing out on that.”

She breathes in sharply but doesn’t pull away. He lets a hand drift up to cup her cheek.

“If I’m wrong – if you don’t want to be a mother – that’ll be hard to hear, I’m not gonna lie. But I’ll support you no matter what you decide. Do you hear me? Tell me you hear me…”

She nods her head against his but still can’t speak. Her eyes shut and she just remains that way, hovering next to him, breathing as if she needs the practice.

“You’re probably scared. So am I. I don’t want to lose us or our careers. But… in the scheme of things, losing a job isn’t anywhere close to losing one’s life, or happiness, or someone you adore…”

She opens her eyes and looks at him. She’s wrecked right down to the core of her. He knows that she couldn’t pull it together right now if her life depended on it.

“I never thought I’d be in this position. I never imagined anyone would linger long enough for the question of children to come up. And I don’t have any experience to draw from, no siblings… But you’re the girl I’ve waited for, Em, and the idea that we could be a family – for real – doesn’t scare me at all. Not _at all._ And you know how neurotic I can get.”

He smiles at her and she watches it happen like she’s never seen one before.

“I love you, sweetheart, and maybe I finally believe in the man you’ve always claimed to see in me. I think we can do this and I want to try. If the only thing holding you back is fear, then take some of my optimism for yourself. I believe in this, Em. I think our tree has room for one more.”

He watches her swallow, sees the tears that mark her cheeks. She doesn’t try to wipe them away – they just keep coming.

He waits.

“Where were you when I needed you twenty years ago?” she whispers. He blinks, not expecting that. “Why wasn’t it you instead of Marty?”

“Ummm, well, it wasn’t me because I was in Las Vegas earning my high school diploma. And I was eleven.”

Laughter bubbles out of her, wet and joyful, bringing the crinkles back to her eyes. He lets out a huge sigh of relief and welcomes her messy, tear-stained kiss.

“You’ve suddenly made me feel like a perv,” she mumbles into his mouth. “You’re having a baby with a perv…”

“Really?” he breaks away from her breathlessly.

“Yeah. You think I could say ‘no’ after that speech?” Her hands frame his face, fingers skimming back and forth along his jaw. “Besides, ever since I found out, all I can think about is how crazy-smart this kid could be, that it could grow up to be kind-hearted, imaginative, strong… and with amazing cheekbones…”

She laughs again when he blinks in confusion, but then it dies away and her gaze gets soft on him. “I can’t love you and not love this baby. I’ve loved it since the stick turned blue. I’m… just scared about what happens next.”

“Me too,” he whispers back, pushing until he brushes her lips. “But not enough to stop me from trying. If we get lost or confused along the way, we’ll get lost together. Deal?”

She kisses him deeply, her hands holding his jaw as if it’ll be a permanent state of being for them. His heart batters around behind his ribs as his entire life narrows down to a single word in his mind: family. It’s amazing – a year ago he almost died, hidden and unknown by anyone. Now he is seen and loved, and going to become a father…

“It’s a goddamned deal,” Emily gusts when they break apart, and they spend the rest of their lunch huddled close in the barren parking lot dreaming of the future.


	33. Chapter 33

**Prentiss: Are you around? Are you busy?**

Reid’s fingers flick over the screen quickly. He’s been waiting all morning to hear from her.

**Reid: Court’s in recess for 30 mins. What happened?**

**Prentiss: OK. Gonna call u.**

He waits and tries to stop his leg from bouncing. His phone rings and he almost fumbles it.

“So? How did it go? Are you okay? What did the doctor say?”

 _“Steady now, babe. Everything’s fine and all my parts are exactly where I left them.”_ She’s laughing at him. Well that’s something. His leg stops bouncing.

“Very funny. Will this call contain any semantic content at all, or is my mockery your only goal?”

 _“I can have more than one goal,”_ she giggles. _“Things are progressing well. We’re both healthy. My doctor says we can tell people if we want to, since we’re out of the first trimester now…”_

He pauses. “Do you want to tell people?”

Then she pauses, and sighs. _“We’ll have to tell Hotch at the very least. My doctor’s not crazy about me continuing to do field work.”_

“Neither am I.”

_“We talked about this…”_

“Yeah, but when you start to… well, become obvious, they’ll put you on a desk anyway. And something could happen before then. Something you can’t anticipate. Why take the risk at all when you don’t have to, Em?”

_“Because… I want to be me as long as I can.”_

“You’ll always be you, no matter what.”

She sighs again, and this time it sounds more labored. _“I’m scared of telling everyone.”_

“Why?” He tries to sound patient and not hurt.

_“I’m scared… of people judging us. Or the baby. I’m scared of overhearing whispers that I’m too old or you’re too young or people laying odds about whether we’ll make it or not… And, yeah, I’m scared of losing my job before I’m ready the leave it.”_

“But… it’s not because… I’m the father. Right?” He closes his eyes and holds his breath, feeling stupid and small and as if he’s somehow failing her.

 _“No!”_ she gasps immediately, and he breathes again. _“Fuck, Spence… WHY would you say that? After everything…”_

“Because I’m a neurotic twerp,” he sighs into the phone, smiling a little. “C’mon, tell me you haven’t been waiting for me to do something stupid like that for almost three months…”

 _“Twerp is a good word. You should get it tattooed somewhere. ‘My name is Spencer Reid and everyone knows I’m a twerp.’”_ She sighs loudly. _“You are a TWERP.”_

“But I’m your twerp,” he chuckles warmly. “It would make a terrible tattoo. Besides, the next one has to be about the baby anyway…”

She pauses again. _“Your next tattoo is for the baby?”_

“Of course. There couldn’t be a more important moment in my life than when I become a father, with you.” She doesn’t make a sound and he assumes that’s because she’s working very hard not to. “But I’ll have to wait until he or she arrives before I know what to get done.”

_“Ummm, about that…”_

“What?”

_“The ultrasound tech slipped up and used a personal pronoun.”_

He stops breathing again. And his leg starts bouncing.

_“So, despite my best intentions, I know what we’re having. Do you want to know as well, or should I just keep it to myself?”_

He’s silent for too long, forgetting that this is all happening over the phone while he is waiting his turn to testify against a serial killer. His life is really strange.

_“Babe? Spence, are you still there?”_

He clears his throat loudly but it doesn’t really help. He trips through his thoughts and makes a mess of them. He should be doing better… he promised that he would take care of her…

“It, umm… well, it would sorta be weird…” His voice breaks over the word and he cringes. “W-weird if you knew a-and I didn’t… Wouldn’t it?”

She laughs a little and it calms him because it’s the last thing he expects from her in this moment. _“It wouldn’t be any weirder than anything else we’ve done. If you’re not ready yet, Spencer, that’s okay.”_

“No,” he gulps. “No, I’m ready. Go ahead and tell me.”

He closes his eyes.

 _“It’s a girl,”_ she murmurs.

His eyes pop open and it’s a whole new world. All he can think about is a tiny Emily staring up from his arms, holding his finger, and waiting for him to tell her everything. He becomes a puddle of soft, useless man sitting on a courthouse bench smiling like a lunatic.

“A girl…” he whispers gently. “Oh…”

 _“Is that a disappointed ‘oh’, or a happy ‘oh’?”_ Again, this was a bad conversation to have over the phone.

“Can we call her Casey? I mean, we haven’t discussed names at all yet, and I don’t want to override any preferences you might have, so maybe we could just… put it on the list or something, but I’ve always liked the name Casey ever since I watched a show about a kid and her dog who lived in a special treehouse when I was young, the dog’s name was Finnegan… Casey and Finnegan… I don’t know if Casey was a girl, I just always thought she was and I thought living in a tree with a dog would be the best way to grow up and Casey was always so happy and I thought if she were real we would’ve been friends and-”

 _“Spencer,”_ Emily hushes him. _“Take a breath, baby.”_ And he does. Then he hears her laughing again. _“I guess that was a happy ‘oh’…”_

“It was, Em. It is…” he stutters and clutches his phone closer, wishing it was her instead. “A daughter… I’m so happy…”

Emily makes a tiny noise that might be a sob but he can’t tell. And when she speaks again, there’s no hint of it in her voice. _“I’m happy too. So happy, Spence.”_ Then she clears her throat and gets back to business. _“I’ll start a names list. Casey will be at the top of it. I expect a clearer explanation when you get home tonight.”_

He loves the way she calls _them_ , together, ‘home’…

_“Now, get your mind off Daddy business and go nail that S.O.B. in court today. You hear me?”_

“I hear you, Em,” he says softly, smiling.

_“Good. Text me when you’re done, and good luck.”_

She hangs up and he floats around in this new feeling of wantedness until the bailiff calls his name. Then he stands and walks into court to do his job with the force of Emily and Casey behind him.


	34. Chapter 34

“I’m going to do it. Right now,” she murmurs as she stands next to him at his desk.

His head pops up and he’s moderating his expression, but even she can tell he’s wondering how she’s going to handle it.

“Do you want me to come?” he asks quietly. She shakes her head.

“Nah. Just let me do it and we’ll roll with whatever he decides.”

“Okay.” He squeezes her hand and doesn’t try to hide it. 

They’ve made a choice: they are telling Hotch because she’s starting to show and Reid is getting increasingly worried about her taking a random punch or something in the field. But they aren’t making a formal announcement to anyone else. Part of it is the concern that one or both of them will be transferred or let go for violating policy, and going from two incomes to NO incomes is not a hardship they want to face. Part of it is… it’s always been private. If they continue as they’ve always done – being professional by day and intimate by night – and people just _start to notice_ , that’s fine by them. It’s also in keeping with their desire _not_ to make a hysterical show of it. It takes the pressure off.

“Ideally, I’d just love to show up at one of Rossi’s dinners holding your hand and pulling out your chair for you an’ stuff. And just let it _be_ in front of everyone without explanation,” he tells her one night in bed as he rubs her stomach.

“Oh God, that would be fun, wouldn’t it?” she giggles back, and then she elbows herself up and stares at him. “Why _can’t_ we just do that?”

So, it gets settled. But they still have to tell their willfully-blind boss that he has no choice now but to see.

Emily walks into Hotch’s office, shuts the door, and takes a seat across from him without a word. Hotch freezes with his pen hovering above his paperwork, watches her carefully and waits.

“Prentiss,” he murmurs.

“Hi,” she says after she clears her throat. She’s possibly more nervous about this than she let on. “I need you to take me out of any physical field duty assignments. Effective immediately.”

Hotch slowly and purposefully lowers his pen and folds his arms across his desk.

“Why do I need to do this?”

“I’m pregnant. Twenty-one weeks.”

Hotch leans back in his chair but says nothing.

“I’m still fine to travel with the team and work cases, just no kicking down doors, car chases, explosions… you know, the usual. My job is sorta turning my OB/GYN’s hair white.” She starts babbling because Hotch continues staring without an expression. She’s so glad that Reid isn’t in the room for this. “And Spencer’s worries about me being tackled or held hostage are starting to get _too_ creative and completely out of control, so I need to nip that in the bud because he’s nervous enough as it is… One of us has to remain calm.”

Hotch sighs, cutting her off, and his expression gets… softer.

“Of course,” he says quietly. “What do you intend to tell the team?”

“Well… honestly, we don’t want to make a formal announcement. Everyone already knows I’m seeing someone and that I have asked for privacy about it. So, getting pregnant isn’t an out-of-the-blue possibility for me.”

“Surely, you don’t think that you can keep Reid out of this…” Hotch’s eyebrows lower.

“No, and that’s not our intention. Everyone knows we’re close – it would be weird if he _wasn’t_ involved, from an outside perspective. If they look at us and connect the dots, so be it.”

“Emily,” Hotch sighed. “They _will_ connect the dots.”

“Sure. Yeah. They’re profilers…” she shrugged.

“No. I mean, Reid won’t be able to hide how he feels as you… progress.” A tiny smile curls Hotch’s mouth. “For some men, the affection and pride is impossible to deny at the prospect of fatherhood. I suspect Reid is one of those men. People will notice it.”

Emily pauses. “Is that a bad thing?”

“No, absolutely not. But you two need to be prepared for the inevitable question.” Hotch leans forward again and shrugs back into a more professional demeanor. “I’ll protect you for as long as I can from upper management, but if it becomes generally known that you two are together, I’m not sure how the Section Chief will respond.”

It’s Emily’s turn to sigh. She knew this was coming. “If we can make it until my maternity leave, that would be best. Maybe I just won’t come back after it’s done. I could ask to be transferred… That could solve everything”

“Let’s not plan escape routes before we need to. I’d prefer to keep us all together, if that is your preference also. So far this hasn’t impacted either of your work performances, and that’s the argument I’d make to the Chief. Should one of you decide to transfer out, that’s a different conversation. But don’t make that decision in anticipation of the higher ups adhering to a ludicrous policy.”

“Okay,” Emily nods and feels a little relieved. She’s not sure how Reid will feel about it, but one burning bridge at a time… “I appreciate that, Hotch.”

“It’s my job, Emily.” He’s smiling again. It might be a record. “Is there anything else? Do you two have any more surprises in store for us?”

“We’re trying to take a break from surprises,” she huffs, rising from her seat. “Unless this kid comes out with horns or a third eye, I think we’re good.”

She hears him chuckling behind her and tells herself that she must describe it to Reid in case he’s never experienced it before. Then Hotch calls her name again, and when she turns back, he’s standing behind his desk with the soft look on his face from earlier.

“I’m happy for you both. This… it’s a wonderful time, and it doesn’t last long. Enjoy it, even if it’s just you and Reid alone. Don’t worry about the rest. We’ll figure it out, Emily.”

She’s overwhelmed. His voice is so quiet, his manner casual, and yet it’s a substantial stand he’s committing to. For _them._ She’s gonna have to tell Reid about that as well.

“Thank you, Aaron,” she chokes out as her cheeks heat. “I… we didn’t expect… we thought we’d be on our own.”

Hotch shuffles around, looking uncomfortable for the first time. “Well, you aren’t.” He picks up a file from his desk and focuses on it. After a moment of silence, he mumbles, “Okay then.” And that’s the end of it.

Emily descends the steps to the bullpen in a fog that she tries to blame on the hormones, but knows is actually the unexpected kindness.

“How’d it go?” Reid murmurs when she sits, eyebrows squiggling at her fogginess.

“He’s got our back. All the way,” she whispers in disbelief. Then she stares at him with new determination. “All we’ve got to concern ourselves with now are our friends’ insights and getting this kid out.”

Reid leans back in his chair with a creak and his squiggles disappear. Instead, he starts grinning like a man who has no desire to hide his feelings, just as Hotch predicted. Emily decides to take _all_ of her boss’s advice to heart and just enjoys it, matching her dork’s grin with one of her own.


	35. Chapter 35

There is general shock, and then unrestrained joy at the news of Baby Prentiss when it becomes obvious to everyone that _something is up_ with Emily’s new, baggier wardrobe. But the person who pieces it all together first comes as a surprise.

“Dr. Sweetheart sure is into this, isn’t he?” Garcia giggles as Reid magically appears with a smoothie in hand and wraps Emily’s hands around it while mumbling, “Sit down. Drink this. Now.” He’s a bit of a fascist about proper nutrition these days. It’s best not to cross him on the subject, but it’s also hilarious given his strict diet of caffeine, refined sugars, and carbs. He disappears back into the local police squad room after his demands are met, and that’s when Garcia begins laughing.

“Never seen him so protective. Doesn’t your Baby Daddy mind? It’s a little weird…”

Emily twitches slightly that the obvious isn’t more _obvious_ to them all yet. Was it really that unbelievable that she and Reid could get together? Was it _her_ suitability they questioned, or his?

“The father is fine with it,” she mumbles as she slurps her smoothie. “And it’s not weird.”

“Maybe not,” Garcia sighs. “You guys lapped ‘weird’ a long time ago, I guess. But it was a bit of a shock that you two are doing the Lamaze classes together.”

“Why?” she snaps, and knows that at least half the irritation she feels is due to the possessive hormone surge that has become her everyday life now. “Why is his attentiveness so strange? Why do people always point to us and say ‘Awww, that’s cute’ – as if everything about us shouldn’t be in the first place?”

Garcia looks at her, grin disappearing and being replaced by an analytical once-over that she usually reserves for her screens. Then an instant later, it all snaps into place and Emily watches as her friend’s mouth drops open, her cheeks flush, and her eyes get impossibly big behind her pink-rimmed glasses. She peeps a quick ‘Oh!’ noise and then covers it with her hand, the other one snapping out to clutch Emily’s shoulder.

“Oh, my god…” she whispers in awe, and Emily ducks her eyes and begins to blush too. “Has it always been him?” she asks when she gets a handle on her surprise.

Emily thinks, _It’s always been him. Even before I knew him. I’ve been looking for that boy under the tree for so long…_ She nods instead, and Garcia’s grip tightens.

“He’s… holy epic secrets, Batman!” Garcia leans in closer and keeps her enthusiasm quiet for once. “I’m really sorry, Em. For the ‘weird’ cracks an’ stuff. Of course, he’s sweet and lovely and gorgeous in his own way… I just thought he wasn’t your type. Honestly, I didn’t know whose type he was… But it’s not that you two don’t make sense. In fact, now that I know, EVERYTHING about this suddenly makes sense to me. I mean, jeez, it’s sorta obvious, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I thought, but you’re the first to guess at it, Pen,” Emily huffs, feeling relieved that _someone_ figured it out before her due date.

“Really?” Garcia puffs up and grins. “Well, go me!” And just as suddenly as Emily’s irritation erupted, it vanishes and is replaced by conspiratorial chuckling.

“So, uh… tell me about you guys,” Garcia murmurs once the giggling settles. “What’s it like?”

Emily leans back into her chair and considers that, staring out into the squad room and watching Reid puzzle out things on a grease board.

“It’s… nothing like I expected,” she says eventually. “I mean, we live together now, and that has its own challenges…”

Garcia makes a little gasp, and Emily realizes it’s a lot to absorb in under a minute: from friends, to lovers, to committed co-habitating partners… It’s been well over a year now but those are still big leaps to make, even for them. She has a surge of pride that they’ve made it this far. It’s so much more than either of them imagined.

“But it’s like… we just turned up the volume on our friendship, ya know? He’s surprising and passionate – there are lots of things I didn’t understand about him until we got together – but he’s not _different_ from the guy I knew before. The essence of him is the same. So, in a way, the reasons why I love him are the same as the reasons why we’ve been friends for years.”

Emily looks up at Garcia and sees her blinking rapidly with a palm spread against her throat. “Oh, sweety…” she chokes. “That’s… the best thing I’ve heard in a long time. It’s just… perfect.”

Emily laughs. “It’s far from perfect, Penelope, believe me. We keep trying to sabotage it because of our past experiences, but somehow, we always seem to come to our senses and figure out that we’re being idiots to one another. Maybe that’s the benefit of being friends first.”

“But… you love him, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Emily says quietly. “I’m off the market. He’s hooked me good.”

Garcia makes a ridiculous keening noise and then reins it all back in like a pro. She’s still clutching Emily, and it’s getting a little painful. Finally, she asks the question that Emily’s been waiting for.

“So, why keep it a secret for so long?”

“A lot of it is the anti-fraternization policy,” she sighs and then shakes herself. “But, also, we’ve used that as an excuse.”

“An excuse for what?”

“We were afraid, pure and simple” she huffs. “We were afraid of each other, of screwing it up, of other people’s judgment… For a while it just seemed easier to keep it to ourselves. We could pretend that it wasn’t as serious as it was. And then as time passed, telling everyone got more and more daunting. I mean, your disbelief is gonna be the same in everyone when they find out. It’s a little like a silent condemnation of us…”

“Oh, honey…”

Emily waves her off. “But it has to happen. It’s not realistic anymore, and the secrecy has hurt Spence more than me. He wants to be ‘normal’ so much… I’ll miss our isolation though. When we were just for each other…” She thinks of their cozy refuge of two, and chokes up a little. It’s silly because it’s not really going anywhere. She assumes the hormones are messing with her again. But she still has a profound urge not to share him with anyone. Except Casey, that is. She rubs her stomach absently. “Hotch is right though: Spencer can’t hide what he’s feeling now, and I can’t ask him to, even though we’ve agreed that we’re not announcing this.”

“Hotch _knows?_ ”

“Yeah. He swung by Spencer’s apartment uninvited one evening and I answered the door half naked in one of Spence’s shirts. Kinda hard to walk that one back, ya know?”

Garcia makes a wet, sporfling sound and then drops to her knees next to Emily’s chair. Emily reaches out and holds her in case the fit of hilarity becomes debilitating. 

“Holy crap! If I had been there, I woulda social media-ed the hell outta that…”

“Yes, well, thank goodness for small mercies,” Emily smiles. “Spence nearly died on the spot.”

When Garcia stops cackling, she grabs Emily’s hand and gives her a warm, sappy look. “Well, I’m glad I know, and I’m super-crazy-happy for the both of you. _And_ I’ll keep my mouth shut about it, so you can have your delicious secret for a little while longer.” She winks at Emily.

“Really, Pen?” Emily gasps, overjoyed at the contradiction of someone knowing _and_ still having her secret. “You won’t even tell Morgan?”

“Nuh-uh. Let him figure it out for himself, big impressive profiler… I’m gonna rub it in when he does: his Baby Girl out-analyzed him. Gonna milk that one until the end of time. I am fab-u-lous, darling…” Garcia snaps her fingers and grins with an evil mischief Emily adores. She grabs her and pulls her close for a hug.

“Christ, you are, Pen, you really are. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Oh, quit it, girlfriend,” Garcia says wetly against Emily’s shoulder. “You’re messing with my make-up. You and your hot, undercover lover news… God, the dish that happens when I’m not paying attention!”

Emily laughs and squeezes her friend until it hurts and other cops start looking at them funny.

\----- 

Reid is knee deep in an engrossing boson article in _The Journal of Applied Physics_ when Emily marches into the bedroom and declares, “No more reading.”

“Almost done,” he mumbles, finger zipping across the words. “Two more minutes.” 

But that timeline doesn’t meet with her approval as she rips the journal out of his hands and sits across him in the bed. He looks up at her, blinking in confusion, and then she reaches out and removes his glasses, placing them on the bedside table with a definitive ‘tink’. His hands automatically shift to her waist and absently skim over her belly as he waits for an explanation.

“I said, no more reading,” she reiterates quietly and then lifts her shirt over her head and tosses it away leaving her naked. “The hormones are having their way with me. I’m horny.”

“Oh. Okay,” he murmurs, still a little stunned, but already forgetting all about bosons in favor of her under his hands.

“Just ‘okay’?” she chuckles as she shifts to draw the sheets away from him. He’s already shuffling out of his shirt for her. “No twitchiness about having sex with someone as big as a mobile home?”

He struggles out of his pants and just manages to shove them down his calves to tangle around them. She’s going to do all the work anyway, if recent history is an indicator. His hands move back to her body, spreading wide and warm across her belly. She’s self-conscious about the way she looks now, he knows. But she turns him on even more – there’s more of her to hold, and her skin feels amazing. Not to mention that her responses are amplified and he can’t help but find that flattering. 

“You’re not big, you’re gorgeous,” he gasps as she manhandles him, not that he needs much encouragement. “I’ve been clear on how I feel about this. And even if I wasn’t, my consent is obvious and… in your hand.”

She chuckles softly and leans close, breathing against his cheek with her hair trailing down across his neck and shoulder. “You’re a trooper, Dr. Reid.” He whines a little at her formality – she knows what it does to him – and then he whines a lot more when she sinks down on him without any build up.

“No concerns about what Casey might think of this?” she gasps as she rolls her hips, setting up a rhythm she likes.

“Uh…” He struggles to think. She’s already really turned on and not wasting any time. His arms wrap around her back and shuffle her closer, making him sit straighter and their angle more satisfying. He groans deeply and begins licking her neck as she arches against him. “I have a feeling… that our daughter has tremendous manners… and will choose to ignore any… temporary unsavoriness on our parts. After all,” he grunts and bites her lips after trailing his mouth up her throat. “We’re doing this _because_ of her… and the hormones she’s unleashed…”

“Just… for her?” She takes his mouth and uses him ruthlessly until he needs to break away for air. Her belly presses against his when she sinks into him, and it spikes his lust indescribably every single time. God, he didn’t know he could want her _more_ than he already did…

“She’s the excuse,” he growls. “You’re _the reason._ You and your glorious, tempting, inappropriate, uninhibited, demanding, replete sensuality… _fuck…_ ” He gasps hard in an attempt to cover the curse, but she drives her hips down into his until she makes him do it again. And then she laughs at him. “Want you so much, Em… all the goddamned time…”

“Language, Doctor…”

“Can’t help it. Sometimes… expletives can be eloquent. Fucking love you both,” he groans losing himself in her hair and scent and warmth. “ ‘Scuse my terminology.”

She doesn’t mock him, too busy grinding herself into him and whimpering with escalating delight. He rocks her, strokes her, holds her close when her movements get a little out of control and tip them both towards the edge too soon. His lips skim over her skin breathing out every joyful sentiment that comes to him, and more than a few are of the four-letter variety. She doesn’t last long – he knew she wouldn’t – too overstimulated and raw to hold anything back now. She bursts around him, crying out with relief as if she’s been holding herself in check for days. It does something to him, that sound, and then he’s in it with her, rolling them through it together as they struggle to breathe and the bed complains under them. She collapses against him before he’s done, all liquid and spent, and as he stretches out the last moments of it, he finds himself whispering into her skin again, consuming and gasping and praising all at once. 

Her arms tighten around him as he softens within her. “That’s what I’m talking about…” she wheezes.

“What… what are you… talking about?”

“Told Garcia…” she mumbles as they rearrange themselves with a mutual hiss. “This thing between us… is like our friendship… but with the volume cranked all the way up…”

“You told Garcia?” he breathes and pulls back to look at her. He thought they were playing it cool.

She shakes her head. “No, she guessed at it. Can you believe it? The one non-profiler got there first. Shoulda laid down some money on this…”

He laughs at the image. He can’t help himself. And then he lies back against the headboard and carries her with him to curl along his chest. “What did the others say about it? Strange that none of them have mentioned it to me yet…”

“Oh, she’s not telling. She said she wants to savor their discovery, but it’s mostly so she can razz Morgan about it until he dies.” Her lips tickle his throat as she whispers and kisses him in random intervals. Then he’s laughing so hard that they are both vibrating with it and she shuffles down onto her pillow to watch him.

“You okay?” she grins, nuzzling down into the bed. “I thought you’d be more freaked out when I told you.”

“Yeah, I thought I would be too,” he chuckles and then reaches out to draw her hair away from her face. Her eyes are beautiful when she looks at him like this – all soft and unguarded… “But that’s just too perfect, and Morgan will _definitely_ be mortified by it when he finds out.”

Emily smiles and leans into his hand a little, watching him.

“Did you really say that about us?” he asks. “That our relationship is a loud friendship?”

“Not loud, more intense,” she corrects. “We’ve never really been loud about this… Do you disagree?”

He shakes his head. “It’s an apt analogy. What else did Garcia say?”

“That she’s happy for us. And that _it makes sense._ Now that she knows, she said it should’ve been obvious all along.”

 _Really?_ He just sits there, stunned. Obvious, like, they were always meant to be? Emily watches his face and then elbows up and cups his jaw, drawing him in for a gentle, lingering kiss.

“We make sense,” she whispers, and it both breaks and remakes his heart at the same time.


	36. Chapter 36

God knows that she loves Reid, but some days he drives her nuts. And on those days, which are increasingly more often during her third trimester, she wonders if she’s actually gone nuts in order to love him in the first place.

Like the day he comes home with paint for the nursery and she is all _‘What nursery?’ ‘Where?’ ‘You’re gonna paint?!?’_ and _‘What are these colors?!!! We’re not having a Batman/Joker lovechild!’_

It turns out Reid’s one bedroom apartment is _actually_ a two bedroom apartment with one bedroom packed to the rafters with so much junk that she always assumed that doorway led to a closet. But he clears it out, with a lot of surprised discoveries and exclamations of ‘I thought I’d lost this! Been looking for it for two years…’, and Emily just rolls her eyes and goes for a walk instead of dreaming up ways to strangle him. When she returns, the paint cans are open and he’s covered in turquoise and purple – he even has it in his hair and the rim of his glasses. But he won’t let her in and makes such a hysterical fuss about paint fumes that she goes for another damned walk. The project goes on for days and she grumbles about it constantly up until the point where he starts snapping back at her.

“Can you _not_ be so pessimistic about my intentions here?” he says sharply during a lunch break. “It makes it so much harder to do something nice for you.”

It shuts them both up and they end up eating their sandwiches in heavy silence until he shrugs away to the closet/nursery with a sigh. She feels like shit. And she’s curious. Also she’s jealous of what he’s doing and how he won’t share it with her. They’re supposed to be preparing together, aren’t they? Then she realizes that she’s acting like an insane person and calls Garcia to ask if she can go to her place to get away from her own crazy.

“Actually, I love turquoise and purple together,” Garcia comments after Emily spills about all of the nuts currently going on in their household. “Whatever he’s doing, I approve.” Emily sighs and drinks her tea; Garcia’s no help whatsoever.

She wanders home again late, after dark, with her phone beeping various worried messages from him.

**Reid: Where did you go?**

**Reid: I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just wanted the room to be a surprise. Forgive me?**

**Reid: You’ve been gone for hours. Are you okay? Please text me back.**

“I’m an armed, pissed off, pregnant woman,” she grumbles as she lets herself in. “Of course I’m not okay…”

She doesn’t know where he is, and the apartment is dark, but both of these facts disappear when she walks past the nursery door. Her mouth falls open and she fumbles her phone back into her pocket as she walks in. The room is almost as big as theirs with a window that overlooks the elm tree planted in front of the building. Light from the streetlamp dapples through its leaves and makes a gentle pattern across the floor. There’s a simple, white crib, as well as a change table, a chest for toys, and another for clothes and such. She’s never seen any of them before. There’s a lamp in the corner that projects constellations onto the walls and ceiling in slowly moving ellipses. The room still smells powerfully like acrylic paint and she suspects he’s only just finished the room in the last few hours given the odor. The walls are turquoise with accents of purple and green – the combination should be a nightmare but, with the lamp light, it ends up being soothing, almost transmogrifying. And he’s painted characters swimming through the colors. Strange, fanciful creatures with wide smiles and impossible anatomy: horses with gills, rabbits with fins, birds in scuba equipment. It’s beautiful. Like the hand drawn tattoos on his body; a wonderful, odd, private world that comforts and cloisters anyone who enters it. Her hand goes to her mouth as she takes it all in. She wants to claw back every critical thing she’s said to him about this. She ends up sitting down in the middle of the room and just staring at the turning, flickering, underwater majesty around her.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he says quietly from somewhere behind her. She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there, but her butt hurts, so…

“I don’t wanna leave,” she says truthfully. His world has sucked her in and mesmerized her.

“The paint isn’t dry yet. The fumes-”

“Spence,” she shushes him gently and then pats the hardwood beside her. “Come sit with me.”

He shuffles over and folds himself into a ridiculous shape on the floor next to her. She looks at him and he’s looking back, still paint splattered and worried, waiting for her verdict.

“It’s amazing,” she whispers, feeling like a child herself, wowed by something too grand to wrap her head around. “You did… this is incredible, babe.”

He smiles shyly, ducks his face.

“I’m sorry I was a bitch about it. Really.”

“You weren’t a bitch…”

“Yes, I was.”

“Okay, you were a bitch.” He shrugs, smirking and making her laugh as she slaps him lightly for his cheek. “But… you really like it?”

“It’s so beautiful that _I_ want to live here…” she breathes, looking back at the world calmly twirling around them. “Casey’s so lucky.”

He cuddles up to her. She feels the heat of him along one side of her as he wraps his arm around her back and pulls her into his chest. “I just want her to feel safe, secure… you know?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. She gets it: he wants to give their daughter what neither of them really had when they were young. She cuddles him back, sighing into his warmth, and they both sit for a while in silence watching the stars move.

“Is your butt numb yet?” he asks eventually.

“So numb.”

He laughs and gets to his feet with loud cracks of his knees. Then there’s a lot of huffing and pulling as he tries to get her and her enormous belly upright as well. He leads them to the door but she stops and looks back.

“We’ll always be safe here, won’t we?” she murmurs. “Even after everyone knows and there are no secrets left, we’ll always be able to come back here and… cocoon…”

His lips meet her cheek. “Always,” he whispers. “This is _our_ world.”

“Okay,” she smiles and allows him to guide her away. Something that is niggling the back of her brain is put into its place by his words. She trusts his assurance. She trusts the security of the world he’s built for them.


	37. Chapter 37

He’s inconveniently in Baltimore with the team when he gets the text message.

**Garcia: H2O 911**

He blinks at the code, understanding it but not believing it. It can’t be right…

**Reid: ???!!!**

**Garcia: She’s early. What can I say? She called me from your place. I know yer in MD, but get to GWU a.s.a.p. Bring the gang.**

_Jesus._ He might faint.

“Jesus,” he mutters without warning and everyone looks at him.

“What’s up, kid?” Rossi asks, placing a stabling hand on him that he desperately needs. “You look whiter than usual…”

“Emily’s water broke.”

There’s a beat of silence and then everything swings into action.

“Right, everyone back to the vehicles. Let’s go,” Hotch commands smoothly and calmly.

“W-what about the case?” Reid looks around as his friends all scatter to three FBI vans like it’s a practiced maneuver or something.

“Baltimore’s not going anywhere,” Rossi grumbles as he shoves Reid to one of the vans. “Besides, you’re her coach, right? We gotta go.”

“And sadly, our victims aren’t going anywhere either,” Morgan huffs as he jogs. “The case can wait on Emily’s baby. And anyway, I wanna finally get a look at this mystery man she won’t let us near. No offense, Reid… I’m sure she really needs you too.”

Hotch makes a suspiciously amused sound and then growls as he gets into the driver’s side of one of the vans. “Less talking. More driving.” And then it’s pedal to the metal until they hit the outskirts of D.C.

\----- 

They pile into the maternity waiting room, flashing badges and scowls, but are told to SIT by an attending nurse who won’t be moved on the subject. Reid instantly loathes her as she goes back to staring blankly at her computer monitor. As if the whole world wasn’t about to drastically change while _she_ made them cool their heels and miss all of it…

“He’s her birthing coach,” Rossi declares and points at Reid. But still, the nurse is unmoved. “Battleaxe…” he murmurs as he huffs into the chair next to Reid, who’s lacing his fingers together until they ache. “ _That’s_ what happens when you lose the love of your work. Sad really…”

Reid’s leg starts bouncing and a quick glance between J.J. and Rossi moves the man to grip Reid’s leg to still it.

“It’s okay, kid. We’ll get you in there. You made a promise to her and I’m gonna see that you keep it.”

Reid looks at Rossi and tries to appear less traumatized than he is. He doesn’t even care if they’ve guessed or not at this point. All he wants is to get to Emily.

“Thank you, Rossi,” he chokes.

“Reid,” Hotch draws his attention, and that of the rest of the room. His eyes stare Reid down as if they are alone. “Deep breaths. Women have babies every day.”

Reid nods, a blush creeping across his face. Morgan starts looking between them in confusion. “Of course they do,” he speaks up. “But what I wanna know is where this man of hers is. If he doesn’t show up for _this_ , I am not okay with him.”

Hotch spares Morgan a pitying glance and then looks away as a new nurse enters the room.

“Who’s here for Emily Prentiss?” 

“We all are.” Hotch stands and Reid is grateful someone has enough wherewithal to speak.

“Ummm, well, we can’t let all of you in.” The nurse looks confused – there are too many men there. “She asked me to come out and get the father. Which one of you is that?”

“He’s not-” Morgan starts.

“That’s me,” Reid stands and rubs his sweaty palms against his pants. _I’m the father. The child is mine. They are both my responsibility – my joy…_ He steps forward in the shocked silence that follows, and that’s when he realizes that none of them figured it out in time. The nurse looks him over and smiles.

“Well, c’mon then. Let’s get you smocked up and in there, shall we?”

Just then, Garcia joins the fray with a breathless clatter of heels on the linoleum.

“Oh, Reid, thank the little baby Jesus! Come _on!_ She’s been asking for you. I swear to god, I think she’s actually been clenching this whole time… But this show is happening whether you’re ready or not and yer girl needs you. So, hustle!”

“ _What?!?_ ” Morgan exclaims behind him.

“Hush, Boo, not now,” Garcia waves him off and starts shoving Reid towards the delivery room since it’s clear the nurse is too polite to do it herself. As they disappear around the corner into the ‘Staff Only’ area, Reid hears Hotch call out, “Good luck!”.

\----- 

Casey is barely a face in her swaddle and too-big toque. She’s two weeks early and tinier than he expects, but she’s also completely perfect. He can’t stop looking at her, sleeping in his smock-covered arms, one small hand gripping his baby finger as if she needs an anchor in this new reality and she’s decided _it’s him._ She’s exactly what he imagined she’d be, but also not, as if that makes any sense. She doesn’t particularly look like either of them at the moment, but that doesn’t seem so important. She does, however, appear to need him, even if it’s just his pinky finger right now.

“Oh, Casey…” he whispers in awe. Emily laughs from the bed nearby. When he looks up, she’s exhausted but grinning like she’s never seen a better moment.

“She’s already got you, hasn’t she?” she murmurs. “No horns or a third eye, but I think that baby’s got some faerie in her somewhere. She’s magicked you.”

He grins back at her as he gently rocks his charge. “No such thing as magic babies. Although, on occasion, I’ve been made to believe that _you_ might be a little otherworldly…” He walks over and gently kisses her. When he does, one of Emily’s hands finds their daughter’s and traces it in wonder. 

“Love you, Pretty Girl,” he whispers against her lips. “So much. You and our daughter. With everything I have. Promise.”

“Spence…”

Their moment is interrupted by the sheepish shuffling of their friends as they are led into the room by a beaming maternity nurse who has no clue how stunning this turn of events has become for them.

“Now, you’ve had a moment with baby,” she says. “I thought you’d like to see your friends. And also they are making my colleagues nervous, so…”

Rossi glares at the nurse and she leaves without further comment. Then everyone stands around for an awkward moment, blinking. 

“Umm, well…” Reid clears his throat and straightens with purpose. He has authority now. A father and everything… “Everyone, I’d like you to meet our daughter, Casey Robin Reid. Casey, this is everyone, and once you’re awake and have better control over depth perception, I’ll tell you who all of these faceless blobs are and why you’re gonna love them.”

“Oh, you guys,” Garcia gushes wetly. “The name is great. Your little bird…”

Hotch steps forward, an unusual gentleness in every line of his body. He comes close and looks at the sleeping child in Reid’s arms and then Reid feels Emily nudging him.

“Oh, uh, would you like to hold her?”

He’s reluctant to give her up, but Hotch’s face lights up and Reid can’t help but grin at it. He wonders if it’s the same expression he had the day Jack was born. They quietly shift Casey between them and _then_ Reid sees it for himself: Casey ensnares Hotch instantly. His whole body curls around her and his expression has never been more animated or joyful. She really is magic.

“Hello, little one. Welcome,” he murmurs, and Casey yawns hugely in response. Then the others come forward, inspired by their leader, and crowd around to get a better look at their newest addition. They are all unbelievably quiet, taking her in with hushed words and gentle strokes along her tiny fingers.

Reid watches in fascination until he feels Emily’s hand clutch his tightly. When he looks back at her, she’s staring at the others as well, her eyes glassy and her other hand pressed to her lips as if afraid to let an emotion slip that could shatter the moment. He bends to her, draws a finger along her jaw and then tips her chin up so he can kiss her. Everyone is occupied with their magical daughter – for the moment, he still has her to himself.

“Look at us,” he whispers into her ear, and she vibrates against him as if she’s laughing. “Who knew we’d get into so much trouble, huh?”

He’s grinning, and when he pulls back to look her in the eye, she’s grinning too. “Look at us…” she repeats, bumping his nose with hers.

A throat clears behind them and they both turn to find everyone watching them. Reid feels a blush rise to his cheeks but the time for hiding is over. He stands next to Emily’s bed and laces his fingers through hers. _This is us. Adjust yourselves to it._

“We… have questions,” Morgan says hesitantly as Garcia shoots him a look.

“They can wait,” Hotch decrees quietly, but Emily holds up her hand for silence.

“Here’s what you need to know,” she declares. “We’ve been together for nearly two years. We’ve never lied to you about it, but we didn’t go out of our way to advertise it either. That’s because _it’s private_. Work is work, and we are us. He’s mine, and I’m his, and it’s just _done,_ okay?” She sits back in the bed with a wince. “Any questions now?”

Reid finds himself staring at her as well. _‘He’s mine, and I’m his…’_ It’s all he’s ever wanted. Today is September 13th and she’s given him both a child and his heart.

Her simple statement seems to shut everyone up again until Hotch nods and smiles at them both.

“I think we’re good. Thank you, Emily.”

He shuffles to Reid and passes back the sleeping Casey, then softly shoos everyone towards the doors. “Let’s let them be now.”

J.J. peeps ‘Congratulations’ over her shoulder and Rossi just grins like a lunatic before being shoved into the hallway. Hotch murmurs his congratulations again, offering up another traffic-stopping smile, and then shuts the door on them.

They are alone again. But this time there’s three instead of two. Reid breathes a huge sigh of relief.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Emily murmurs.

“Thanks to you,” he says. “I doubt any of them will have the guts to bring it up with either of us again.”

“Well,” she sighs, hands trying to rearrange her hair and hospital gown into something less hospital-y. “Job well done then.”

“Yes. A job extremely well done,” he says softly, smiling. “Thank you, Em. Today is the day it happened.”

Her brow wrinkles in confusion. “Today is the day that what happened? Other than the obvious…”

“Today I got it all. Everything I wanted. Everything I was too scared to hope for because I never thought it would actually happen.” He cuddles his daughter close and vows to never let her go, never let either her or her mother down. 

“Spencer,” she chokes out and then bursts into tears. He shuffles up to her with Casey, not sure what to do or say with a sleeping infant in his arms and a weeping woman in front of him.

“I’m sorry, Em, sorry-”

“No, no…” she waves a hand around to quiet him and then wipes her face with the edge of her hospital gown. “It’s fine, babe. I’m just too tired for emotional declarations like that at the moment. I love you, okay? I just… this is everything. For me too.”

She sits back and watches him holding Casey, no doubt with a look of subdued panic on his face. She’s probably used to that by now. She smiles.

“I want to go home. Can you take us home, Spencer? I want just the three of us, and the smell of books, and that peaceful turquoise room…”

His panic evaporates. Well, as much as it ever does. He grins and nods.

“Let’s go home,” he says.


	38. Chapter 38

The first week of Casey’s life is absolute pandemonium of which she is blissfully unaware. Her parents, on the other hand, are twitching, nervous wrecks leaping from one dilemma to the other as only novice mothers and fathers can. The problem is that Casey is a napper, usually only going down for forty minutes at a time, which means that she’s drowsy when she nurses and tends to fall asleep in mid-meal. It’s not really a problem for Casey, but for Emily who must be awake all the time to try and coax her underweight daughter into a full meal. By the end of the first week, they’ve been to their doctor and a lactation specialist, and they’ve aged about five years in the process. By week two, Reid hears Emily say things like, “I can’t remember sleep.”

“It’ll get better,” he croaks, eyes itchy from the light and fingers dancing from endless cups of coffee. “We just need to focus on the basics right now…”

“Basics like _eating?_ ” Emily snarks, deep circles under her eyes and Casey half-dozing at her breast.

He shrugs, too tired to defend himself. Emily turns and heads for the nursery.

“I don’t know how, but I’m pretty sure this is your fault,” she mumbles over her shoulder. Reid shrugs again and flops down onto the couch and is asleep almost immediately.

Then, like a miracle, Hotch comes to the rescue.

“I hear you have a snacker on your hands,” he says with a slight curl to his lips when Reid answers the door on the third week looking like a war-weary soldier.

“How did you…”

Hotch walks past him into the apartment and heads to where Emily and Casey are staring at him from the couch.

“J.J. told me. I’ve also brought some food from Garcia. Where should I put it?”

The Reid family just blinks at him and Hotch doesn’t wait for an answer anyway, striding to the kitchen and beginning _to manage_ things much like he does everywhere else. Reid collapses onto the couch, ignoring Emily’s pokes and whispers of “Find out what he’s doing”; he’s too tired to care if Hotch sees their pile of dirty dishes or Emily’s breast pump. There’s some rattling around and then Hotch reappears, a smile for Casey as he crosses the apartment and asks to hold her. He curls around her as he did in the hospital and Casey’s comes alive, wiggling and burbling in his arms.

“Oh my, she’s a talker, isn’t she?” he grins. Reid can’t help but mimic it, tired as he is.

“She is.” Pride warms him. He loves his daughter without reservation, but the conversation is something that adds an extra layer of delight to it all. He never expected that. “When she’s awake that is.”

“How long does she sleep?” Hotch is cooing and wiggling his fingers at Casey, not looking at either of them.

“An hour, tops,” Emily sighs and sags back into the couch, although she’s smiling a little too.

“That won’t do at all,” Hotch mock-scowls, then he looks up at them. “Have you tried ignoring her?”

Something primal in Reid’s gut infuses his exhaustion with new energy. His spine straightens, his fingers curl.

“Why on earth would we do that?” he growls lowly.

Hotch gives him a calm, knowing look, and when he speaks, it’s with the quiet confidence that is the cornerstone of his leadership. “She won’t fall into a routine unless you establish one. She needs to eat often, but not every hour. Right now she’s just doing whatever her body demands but she’s not really getting what she needs, either deep sleep or a full meal.”

“So… you want us to… ignore her needs?” Emily’s face is the definition of disbelief.

“Jack was this way too,” Hotch assures them. “One of Haley’s doctors suggested that we ignore him – let him cry himself out – and stick to a three to four hour feeding schedule. It was nerve-racking in the beginning – there’s no way to be comfortable listening to your child cry – but it didn’t take long for him to get the hang of it. Before long, we were all on a routine we could live with.”

Reid blinks, not sure how to respond to the advice from a man who’s making rubbery faces at his daughter. Casey sputters a gust of delight, arms wiggling, toes twitching in full-body glee. Then Reid looks at Emily, who’s also staring in confusion.

Finally, deciding that the interloper is not trying to kill his child, Reid’s energy drains from him. “Couldn’t hurt to try, I suppose,” he sighs and sags back into the couch. A bell rings distantly from the kitchen, and Hotch looks up.

“Ah, soup’s ready.” He rises with Casey still in his arms. “Garcia made minestrone. I’m heating some up for you two. Let’s go get Mommy and Daddy some lunch, Casey… they are working very, very hard, you know. You and I have to take care of them…”

Hotch disappears into the kitchen but Reid can still hear him talking to Casey, and Casey burbling back.

“Jesus… I think Hotch might be Mary Poppins,” Emily gusts in shock. Reid turns to look at her as she melts into the couch like she’s going to remain there forever. “Can we keep him?”

Hysterical laughter bubbles out of Reid as he imagines Hotch flying through D.C. clutching an umbrella and scowling, his tie fluttering behind him as he goes. 

“Let’s see if he knows what he’s talking about first.”

They try ignoring Casey and it is every bit as terrible as Hotch said it would be. Reid clutches Emily close on the couch as they listen to Casey cry from the nursery. It seems to go on forever, and before long they are both shaking as they cling to each other.

“I _have_ to go,” Emily hisses wetly. “Listen to her! I have to…”

“No,” Reid swallows down the same panicked impulse to fly to the nursery. “Just a little longer. Wait just a little longer, Em.”

They wait, and then Emily is quietly snuffling into his shirt, and he’s fighting to stay where he is, to do what needs to be done when he’s unsure exactly what that is. Then, like a light switch being flicked, the crying stops. They both sit ramrod straight and _listen._

“What if she’s…” Emily whispers urgently.

They both leap from the couch and race to the turquoise room, but when they get there they find only a softly sleeping baby and a swirl of constellations. They creep in silently, in wonder, and watch their daughter’s even breathing. Reid grabs Emily and pulls her against him, half in relief and half to keep her from reaching for Casey and potentially waking her.

“I can’t believe it…” she murmurs.

“She must have tired herself out,” he whispers back, one hand stroking Emily’s arm. “We should leave. See how long it lasts.”

“I want to watch her.”

“Emily, come away,” he breathes into her hair. “She’s all right.”

He gently pulls her from the room and they both manage almost two hours of sleep tangled in a heap on the sofa. When Casey wakes, she’s bright and hungry, and Emily murmurs, “Okay. We take Mary’s advice to heart from now on.”

Things get better. They’re still sleep deprived, but they stop camping out on the couch and move back into the bedroom. Reid does whatever he can think of to help, even if it’s a little questionable. One evening Emily stirs awake to find Reid holding Casey to her breast while she nurses.

“What the… When did _this_ start?” she grumbles.

“Go back to sleep,” he shushes as Casey sucks noisily. “I’ll burp her, change her, get her to go back down… just sleep, Em.”

“I’m just a milk bar to you, aren’t I?” Her tone is unimpressed but when he looks up in the dark, there’s a smile curling the corner of her mouth. He leans in and brushes that curve with his lips.

“Yep. But a really sexy milk bar.”

“I bet you say that to all the wet nurses. Weirdo.” But she does what he says and sleeps anyway.

After Hotch’s visit, a steady stream of visitors come to the apartment, which is both a relief and an extra layer of work. Garcia comes almost daily, each time with a new bag full of _stuff_ both useful and inane. Rossi shows up almost as often, breezing past whichever one of them answers the door and making a beeline for his ‘uccellino’, babbling at her almost as much as Hotch does, but in Italian.

“She’ll speak Italian before she speaks English at this rate,” Reid grumbles, a tiny flare of jealousy lighting in his gut at all of the substitute ‘fathers’ his daughter is collecting.

“Ci sono cose peggiori,” Emily smirks.

“Don’t you start,” he warns.

The most frightening visit is the forty-five minutes spent with Ambassador Prentiss who, to Reid’s horror, is not only unaware that they are living together, but also that Emily is in a relationship to begin with, let alone that the Ambassador has a grandchild.

“Emily,” Elizabeth Prentiss says sternly but quietly as she holds her granddaughter for the first time. “ _Really._ ”

It is probably the only time Reid finds himself in complete agreement with the Ambassador.

“How could you NOT TELL HER?” he asks after the punishingly awkward visit ends. Emily ducks her eyes away and fusses over Casey instead.

“It didn’t come up.”

“Well, of course it didn’t. Because YOU never brought it up!”

Casey whimpers as her father’s voice rises.

“Our relationship is private,” she says defensively. “And I’ve never been close with Mom.”

“Well… sure. But once you got pregnant? How could you not tell her about that? How could you just let her walk in here without knowing?! She’s not my favorite person, but even I think you owed her more than that…”

“What did you want me to tell her, Spencer? That I’m shacked up with a man ten years younger than me? That I’m bedding someone I work with? That I’m having a bastard child? Maybe I should’ve told her that you’re a beast in the sack as well – would that have been acceptable to you?”

His face flames with embarrassment at the words he knows she’s using to deflect her own guilt. Then his age-old neuroses pop to the surface like a jack in the box.

“Are you ashamed of me? Of telling your mom about me? Do you honestly think of Casey as a ‘bastard’?”

“No!” she yells, and then Casey cries. Face scrunched and red at the anger around her she doesn’t understand. Emily twists around her and coos, rocking her and whispering into her forehead until she settles into little hiccupping sobs.

“I just… didn’t know how to start the conversation, okay?” she mutters once Casey quiets. Then she looks up at him for the first time and he sees how upset she is, not defensive, not defiant. “Mom’s always been so critical of everything I do. I didn’t want… I didn’t want to see her disapproval. About any of it.”

“She didn’t seem like she disapproved, Emily,” he counters quietly.

“That’s because of Casey. If I’d told her before, she’d absolutely come down on us like a ton of bricks.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You don’t know her.”

“But you didn’t even give her the chance, Em. This is a huge thing to keep from someone who loves you.”

Her face changes into something… frightened. And then it’s gone in an instant, replaced by the steely determination that he finds so compelling and daunting about her.

“And I suppose you told Diana everything,” she snaps.

“Yes, I did,” he admits. “Right after the first time we were together.”

The statement stops her dead, Casey squirming in her arms. Reid sighs and steps forward to scoop up his daughter.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he murmurs. “I didn’t know then if it would turn into anything, but it was important to me, so I told her.”

Emily is silent for quite a while as Reid stares at her and wonders how he can know her so well and yet still surprise her this way. Then she simply says, “Fuck.”

“Um-hmm,” he nods. “She doesn’t always remember, so I have to keep telling her about us, but… yeah.”

“And… and she’s okay with it?”

His expression melts when he sees how she still, relentlessly denies her value. “Of course she is, Em. You’re the girl under the tree. That’s all she needed to know – she was overjoyed.”

She keeps staring at him, and then her hands go to her head as if it’s about to bust open. “ _Fuck,_ ” she husks loudly and Casey chirps along with the noise.

“Language, Em,” he chastises softly and then steps closer. 

“I keep doing this wrong…”

“No, you don’t. You’re just figuring it out as you go. You make mistakes – that’s all. Nothing that can’t be fixed.” He shuffles next to her, bumping her shoulder with his until she looks at him. “My relationship with Mom is unique. You can’t compare it to yours with Elizabeth. But just… _think_ about your choices before you shut someone out, okay? The people who love you _love you_ , no matter what you’ve done. You’ve gotta start believing that at some point.”

She leans against him, staring, and then she sighs and ducks her head down onto his shoulder, reaching for Casey in his arms as she reaches back and gives her parents an open-mouthed, toothless grin.

“She smiles like you,” she murmurs.

“She smiles like someone who’s never known sadness. She smiles like someone who knows she’s adored,” he breathes into her hair. “I _adore_ you, Emily Prentiss, and I hope one day you’ll understand that and smile the way your daughter does.”

She clasps his jaw and twists to give him a searing kiss. There hasn’t been much time for this since Casey arrived, and neither of them has had much energy to spare. He melts into it, lets her do what she wants, and when she breaks away, he sees how stripped down she is. It’s a bareness she rarely shows, even to him. And his breath leaves him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, eyes glassy.

“Sweetheart, it’s okay,” he rushes to answer, brushing her mouth with his. “I told you: there’s nothing that can’t be fixed…”

She doesn’t say anything to that, just rests against him and wiggles her fingers at Casey to make her smile again. It leaves Reid unsteady, like there’s something unsaid between them that needs to be spoken, but soon the needs of a tiny human take over their lives again, and the sensation fades.

Another problem presents itself and it is Morgan. He’s the only one who doesn’t visit them, and Reid starts to take it personally. He mentions it to Rossi one afternoon as the man playacts some ridiculous story of his own invention for Casey who chirps her delight like the tiny bird Rossi constantly calls her. Reid decides that his daughter is as equally ridiculous as his friend, but he enjoys her silliness far more. He’s charmed by her wiggling and squirming and animated chatter in a language only she understands.

“Morgan’s upset. Embarrassed mostly, I think…” Rossi says casually while pretending to be a monkey for Casey. Reid swears that Casey actually makes a tiny cackling noise.

“Embarrassed? Why?”

“He’s a proud guy. You know that. And he didn’t have a clue. Instead of owning up to that blind spot – ‘cause let’s face it: none of us saw it because we didn’t believe it could happen between you two, and that’s sorta a huge insult on our parts that none of us has apologized for yet…” Rossi shoots him a look that says he’s completely serious about that. “Derek’s choosing to sublimate his guilt by pushing it back onto you. Which is dumb. He should know better.”

“Onto me?”

Rossi nods and spider-walks his fingers across the couch to Casey as she squeals and grabs at them. “He’s decided to feel sorry for himself. He keeps saying ‘Reid’s my best friend – how could he keep this a secret?’”

Reid blinks and tries not to give into the twist inside his chest.

“Most of us were shocked at how he’s managed to miss the point so consistently in this. I was shocked that he called you his best friend.”

“So am I.”

Rossi looks at Reid. “But it does explain a few things, doesn’t it?”

Reid nods glumly, and then Rossi clasps him on the shoulder.

“It’s not as bad as all that, kid. Just draw him back in somehow. Give him something that you haven’t given the rest of us. Make him feel special.”

“How do I do that?”

“How the hell should I know?” Rossi grins and goes back to his tiny spirit animal on the sofa. “You’re the genius. Think of something.”

After Rossi leaves, Reid tells Emily what he said and asks her what to do.

“Maybe give him a responsibility,” she shrugs, holding a squirming Casey who’s crying about having a wet bum. “Think about what he’s good at,” she calls over her shoulder as she and Casey disappear into the nursery.

He thinks, running down all of Morgan’s many talents: athleticism, stalker profile markers, weapons and tactical assault, boot and tiny fedora selection… He shakes his head at his own literalness. There has to be something else, something softer… Beard maintenance, high speed chases, sexual innuendo, bad jokes, nicknames, construction… _wait._

He pulls out his phone, a secret smile spreading over him.

**Reid: I could really use your help with something. Do you have some free time?**

**Morgan: What do you need help with?**

**Reid: Emily’s got this idea that Casey needs more traditional toys to play with. Less plastic, ya know? I don’t really get it but I won’t argue.**

**Morgan: Smart man**

**Reid: Well, I was thinking that wooden toys would be acceptable, but they aren’t as easy to find as you’d think. You know, ones that are responsibly sourced and constructed… Do you know any carpenters who make things like that?**

There’s a lag where Reid just stares at his phone and waits. Then the message chime beeps and his grin gets huge.

**Morgan: I’m not so bad at woodworking**

**Reid: Oh. Is that something you’d like to try? No pressure. I know you have plenty of projects going…**

**Morgan: Yeah, Pretty Boy, I can give that a whirl. Gotta do what we can to keep that woman in your life, right?**

**Reid: I’m pretty sure having Casey assures that, but okay. Whatever helps.**

**Morgan: I was joking, man. Emily & you are a good fit. I can see that now.**

**Morgan: Sorry about being an idiot.**

**Reid: You aren’t an idiot – I never thought that. And I’m sorry I kept it from you. It seemed like a good decision to us when we made it, but… yeah.**

**Morgan: Who put you up to this?**

Reid smirks and decides not to feign innocence.

**Reid: Rossi. He says you’ve been pouting.**

**Morgan: Grown men don’t pout. I’ve been unusually introspective, that’s all.**

**Reid: Well, stop that. Casey needs to get to know you. She’s never gonna believe we’re best friends if you’re never around.**

**Reid: And Emily says you’re afraid of a teeny tiny baby**

**Morgan: I’m not afraid of a baby!**

**Reid: Prove it**

**Morgan: Okay, Smart Guy. Yer on. Look out for wicked toys and the coolest uncle yer kid’s ever gonna get. She needs some cool to balance out all of your NERD.**

**Reid: Promises, promises… ;)**

Reid pockets his phone and rocks on his heels feeling as if he’s really achieved something. And that’s how Morgan’s side hobby as a toymaker begins.


	39. Chapter 39

Casey wriggles, making a profusion of bubbles burst along her lips from the effort she’s putting into it and her chorus of ‘bahs’.

“I know. I completely agree with you. It makes no physical sense whatsoever,” Reid says, wiping away the bubbles and Casey grabs his finger for good measure. “But that’s the way it works: it’s bigger on the inside. I swear to you.”

Casey squeals her disbelief and then pulls Reid’s finger, digging her tiny nails in and rocking into the movement with enthusiasm.

“Ouch,” he murmurs. “Don’t take it out on me. I didn’t write the laws of the show. But if we consider the possibility of higher dimensions in the universe, physical size could indeed be rendered irrelevant… That’s interesting, don’t you think?”

Casey sputters and arches in her father’s arms, clearly unimpressed with his rationalization around the laws of physics. 

“Yeah,” he nods. “There’s no doubt that it’s a convenient, narrative handwaving, but the rest of it is so enjoyable, it’s difficult to hold that against them…”

“Ah, ah, ahhh…” says Casey.

He smiles at her, tickling her chin the way he does sometimes when she falls asleep during feedings. It still happens, but not as often as in the beginning. Casey giggles, and Reid thinks it’s the best sound in the world. Better than rain on a roof at night, or wind through grass, or the way Emily says his name in the dark…

“What are you two talking about?”

He looks up. Emily’s propped against the front doorframe, smirking, with bags of groceries in her hands. He wonders how long she’s been spying on them.

“ _Doctor Who_ ,” he says. Emily laughs, rolls her eyes, and shuts the door behind her.

“Naturally. What does she think?”

“She doesn’t appreciate the physical dichotomy of the Tardis.”

“Well, who does? It’s ridiculous.” Emily marches into the kitchen.

“Bite your tongue, woman,” he grins after her even though she doesn’t see it. He can hear her laughing as she puts the groceries away. “Did you get the Pop Tarts?”

“No, I did not. I got _fruit_.”

“Ugh,” he sags and then looks down at Casey who seems perplexed. “Mommy hates fun.”

“I heard that…”

Casey squeals in what Reid chooses to interpret as umbrage at the lack of edible fun in the house. He enjoys having someone side with him on this matter. Emily saunters back into the living room.

“Mommy hates diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and tooth decay. Not fun.”

She holds out her hands and wiggles her fingers. Reid gets up and walks to her, giving up his team mate with a sigh. Casey makes an excited noise that rises and falls in its own secret meaning when she recognizes her mother. More than anything, Reid wishes that he actually knew what she was saying rather than making fanciful guesses at it. Her world seems so full to him, that she can barely contain it as it bursts forth daily in excited chitterings and squeals…

“ _Such_ a lot to say today, little bird…” Emily murmurs warmly as she lets Casey grab at her blouse while she trills.

“I’d love to know what she thinks about…” he says wistfully. Emily looks at him.

“Soon enough, babe. She’ll probably end up just like you: unable to shut up.”

“I’m quiet when I need to be,” he says. “But knowledge is too exciting to be stifled sometimes…”

“I know,” she leans in and gives him a quick buss on the cheek. “I’m preparing myself for a future where I won’t get a word in edgewise. Has she been fed?”

“No. I was about to warm a bottle.”

“I’ll do it.” 

Emily gives Casey a loud zerbert on her neck that makes her laugh and sneeze at the same time. Then Casey laughs even more. Reid has never met someone who finds such joy in _everything._ He wonders how he can help her hold onto that quality. Emily is laughing too, just because Casey is contagious. He stands back and watches them together. Something behind his ribs bursts and radiates across him in an indescribable way. He doesn’t know exactly how to name it, but he suspects that it is a nearly perfect state of happiness. Or as close as people ever get to it. He suddenly, inexplicably, thinks of Buddhism and the concept of living completely in the moment, at peace with all that swirls around and through and beyond. He’s never been remotely religious, but in this instant, he thinks he understands the appeal of such an idea.

Emily looks at him, eyes glittering with her laughter. “What?”

“Nothing. Everything. You two are just perfect, is all.”

She rolls her eyes at him again, and the moment passes as it inevitably must. “Soooo sentimental,” she breezes and carries Casey to the kitchen. “Daddy’s a sentimental romantic sort, Casey. Really old fashioned…” He hears Casey burble and it sounds like agreement. His mouth lifts in a smirk as he sighs and follows his women into the other room.

“Not so old fashioned. I’m covered in tattoos after all…” he reminds her as he leans against a counter. And then his mind burps without warning: _And I haven’t asked her to marry me yet…_ He shakes his head. _Married. Married to Emily Prentiss. That could happen, couldn’t it? If I asked, that could happen…_

Across the kitchen, Emily shrugs balancing Casey on one hip and completely unaware of Reid’s sudden awakening. “Hmmm. Speaking of which, have you thought about one for the little bird yet?”

Reid blinks and shakes his head a second time. “Pardon?”

“A tattoo,” Emily turns to face him. “For Casey. You said that would be your next one, remember?” Casey chirps to drive home the point, and then she holds out a chubby hand towards her Dad.

“Ahhhhhh…”

“Yeah, Daddy,” Emily smiles. “Ahhhhhh…”

Still stunned, Reid lopes towards his daughter and then takes her outstretched fingers gently into his mouth and mushes them like he’s eating her. Casey squeaks and pulls her hand back, then shoves it back at his face almost immediately. 

“I was waiting for her to tell me who she is,” he growls as he nibbles at her. Casey chirps and flaps her arms excitedly, squealing and trying to hide against Emily’s neck enjoying this new game as much as anything else she’s experienced today. “But I think I know…” he finishes.

And he does. Two weeks later, the day Casey turns five months old, he comes home with a new bandage in an old place. After they’ve put Casey down, Reid pulls Emily aside and unbuttons his shirt, peeling the gauze away for her as he did once before. Across his heart, over their tree with the two childlike versions of themselves beneath it, is a brilliant robin flitting through the oak leaves. Her colors are bright against the blackness underneath – she is a burst of light in a monochrome world. Emily knows better than to touch it but he can see that she wants to, her throat moving as she swallows over and over.

“Our little bird…” she murmurs.

“Yes.”

He huddles closer and she looks up, hands avoiding the new mark and instead burying themselves in his hair. She watches him as his eyes slip closed before pulling him in. Her kiss is breathless and deep, a quieter, more knowing version of what they once did so recklessly. He doesn’t mind the change, appreciating the unhurriedness of it, the lack of doubt that she spells out in gasps and softness. She’s his – he feels it now where he once had to convince himself of it. It’s not because of Casey, but she absolutely intensifies the state of being. Emily is his because of _him._ It’s an incredible, impossible feeling – another moment of near religious faith in his secular existence. He dips into her as he wraps her up, stretching out the moment with joy he’s learned from his daughter. When they gasp apart, he nips her gently, her lips, her jaw, her neck, and his fingers grip her tighter.

“You make me so happy,” he whispers and she shivers against him. “You both do.”

The words are on his tongue: _marry me._ But he stops himself, afraid to overplay his allotment of joy. The moment is so perfect, he tells himself it’s enough – just exist in it without expecting more. There will be other moments, other opportunities to say the words. He’s lost his fear of the other shoe dropping and her coming to her senses. She’s cured him of his belief that he’ll eventually ruin this for them. She loves him, they love each other – he believes in it. They’ve figured this out and it’s not going to suddenly disappear. They’ve created a world that _works_ and he’s finally come to trust it. And that realization is as beautiful as Casey’s laughter.


	40. Chapter 40

Her condo’s been on the market for ages. After the first three months without a serious offer, she leases it to a friend of her mother’s from the diplomatic core who needs a place to stay for his frequent trips to D.C. He’s a low maintenance tenant and she can bide her time until the market bounces back enough to get a decent return on her purchase price. But six months after Casey’s birth, she _still_ can’t unload the thing and it’s starting to irk her; they could really use the money.

So, perhaps that’s why she gives so much leniency towards the interested buyer who pops up one day and runs both her and her realtor in circles about viewings, home inspections, and terms of sale. She grumbles about it at length until one day Reid casually says, “You’re not very patient, are you?” as he’s feeding Casey.

She blinks at him from across the kitchen. “I just don’t appreciate being run like a race car, is all.”

Reid laughs and turns back to grin at her as Casey chirps for more steamed carrots. “You don’t like the lack of control, period. It’s a million-dollar property, Em. The guy’s gonna be cautious.”

“Well, the least he could do is run us around _in person_ ,” she grumbles as she heads for the door. “It’s been two months of this and I have yet to meet the nervous bastard…”

“Be. Nice.” He chuckles as she slams the door behind her. She’s of the opinion that Reid is too generous towards everyone.

She waits with her realtor for forty-five minutes before she loses her cool.

“This is ridiculous,” she growls, first looking at her watch and then the bored real estate agent. “You’re sure he confirmed the time?”

“He confirmed twice,” the realtor holds up two fingers as she leans against a table in the front hallway.

“Well, I’m about done with this. I’m eager to sell but some peo-”

The doorbell rings and both she and the realtor glance at one another before Emily marches to the door and opens it to find an acne-spotted delivery boy rather than a nervous, would-be condo buyer.

“Flowers for Lauren Reynolds?” he croaks, and Emily grasps the doorframe at the mention of a name she’s wanted to forget for years. The boy looks at her expectantly for a few seconds before shoving a clipboard at her. “I don’t care if that’s you or not. Could you just sign for them anyway?”

She blindly scrawls something and numbly accepts the wrapped bundle as the boy skips away blissfully unaware of the dread he’s unloaded into her arms. She swings the door shut and locks it, making her realtor’s eyebrows rise.

“Who sent them?” she asks. Emily tears at the paper, but the scent is unmistakable even before she uncovers the lilacs. She nearly gags and avoids touching the blooms. “Where the hell do you find lilacs in winter?” the realtor mumbles and then reaches for the delivery card before Emily can stop her.

“ _‘Deepest apologies for missing you, Lauren. Look forward to catching up soon.’_ ” The realtor reads the card and then glances up with a squiggle of confusion. “He got your name wrong…”

“What do you know about him?” Emily asks breathlessly, her heart beating so fast that her vision is whiting out at the edges from the stress. “Have you met him?”

The realtor shrugs. “He’s nice enough. Older, grey hair, startling blue eyes. Foreign – English maybe. I’m not so good with accents. Extremely polite. That’s why I don’t understand this foot dragging… Maybe he’s trying to drive down the price? Though how he could know you’re so motivated to sell is beyo-”

“What have you told him about me?” Emily demands. The realtor blinks at her tone and the accusation in her question.

“Nothing beyond the description of the property.”

“Realtors chat,” Emily snaps, wanting more than anything to _run_ , to grab Reid and Casey and hop on the first flight to anywhere but here. “You make small talk, try to get a buyer interested… what have you said about me?”

“Emily, I swear, I’ve barely talked with him. We’ve mostly emailed back and forth about the listing. He’s been the only nibble in months… What's going on here?”

Emily’s pulse is out of control – she’s finding it hard to breathe. She can’t see, can’t think. _He’s come for me. How is he free? They promised me he’d die in prison. They PROMISED ME._ Then, she thinks of Reid feeding Casey at home. Her family – she’s left them defenseless. He’ll cut through them like a hot blade in butter, and they won’t even understand why it’s happening. Her body comes alive with vicious heat and an impossible desire to move. She drops the flowers and pulls her off-duty piece, checking it and the safety. The realtor gasps.

“Don’t make any more appointments with him. Don’t return his calls or messages. And _don’t_ allow him access here. He’s not who he says he is.”

“Emily, what the fu-”

Emily turns on the agent and stares her down in a way that says this is a lot more urgent than the other woman thinks it is.

“He’s dangerous, okay? And he’s not looking to buy a condo, I can tell you that much.”

The realtor’s face pales. “Is he… like, a stalker?”

Emily shrugs and then heads for the door. It’s sorta the truth, but not all of it. “Yeah, kinda. But don’t worry – he’s not interested in you. If he contacts you again, let me know and the Bureau will look into it. I’ll have the locks and security code to this place changed today. Take the listing off the market. I’ll call you when the situation changes.”

She doesn’t wait for a response, running through the door and down the corridor to the fire stairs without looking back. She fishes out her phone and dials as she slams into the stairwell.

“Pick up, pick up…”

_“Hey love, how’d-”_

“Spence” she nearly sobs in relief as her shoes clatter down the stairs too fast. It shuts him up immediately.

_“What’s happened?”_

“I’m coming,” she gasps wetly. “Are you armed?”

 _“It’s in the gun safe…”_ he murmurs cautiously. Casey is burbling happily in the background.

“Get it. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Just… be aware, Spencer. Please.” Her throat is closing up. She can’t lose them. All those years when she had no significant connection to anyone… she sees the freedom in that now. If she loses her family, it’ll be the end of her. They’ve made her strong and weak in equal measure, and she doesn’t know how to handle this new fragility that has exposed her to attack.

 _“Emily-”_ he blurts, but she hangs up on him and races down the stairs to her car hoping that she can protect them and that he’ll forgive her when he discovers everything she doesn’t want him to know about her.

\---- 

Then the texts start arriving.

**Unknown number: Did you get my flowers? So sorry to cancel on you.**

She fumbles with her phone at a stop light, fingers typing too hard and too fast.

**Prentiss: Don’t be coy. You want me, so tell me when & where. Leave my family out of it.**

**Unknown number: Such a nice family. Never thought of you as a brood hen, but it’s interesting that you can still surprise me, Lauren.**

**Prentiss: I mean it, Ian. They’ve done nothing to you. They are innocent.**

**Unknown number: No, they aren’t. You made them a part of this just by being in their lives. Not my fault.**

The light changes. Cars behind her begin blasting their horns at her. She guns it through the light and pulls off into a side street and quickly throws the car into park. She’s lightheaded and that’s when she realizes she not breathing regularly. She has to breathe, she has to think… Then an idea comes to her.

**Prentiss: Declan is alive.**

**Unknown number: Lying won’t help you, bitch.**

**Prentiss: It’s the truth. I faked his death & gave him a new identity. I know where he is. Leave my family be & I’ll tell you, I swear.**

Her phone goes silent in her hands for far too long and she’s paralyzed by it, too afraid to start driving again and yet not getting any closer to Reid and Casey while she waits.

**Unknown number: Tell me now.**

**Prentiss: That’s not how this works. My family’s safety first – your fucking WORD, Ian.**

**Unknown number: Alright. My word – no harm to them IF you take me to Declan. Personally. Yer not getting out of this, Lauren – you need to know that this deal does not include you. Recompense is due.**

**Prentiss: Fine. When & where?**

**Unknown number: Take this seriously. If you fail to deliver, I’ll come back and visit them. Your nerd and the pretty girl in the dinosaur dress…**

Emily’s heart squeezes until she cries out from the sudden pain of it: Casey is wearing a dress covered in multicolored dinosaurs today. He could be looking at them _right now._ She wants to call Reid and make sure he isn’t staring into a gun barrel right now, but if he is there’s nothing she can do about it in her parked car across town.

“Motherfucker, don’t you dare…” she hisses through sudden, violent tears. “I’ll take you in pieces. Before I die, I swear…”

She swallows the rage down and wipes the tears away viciously as she tries to slip into Lauren’s skin one last time to get the damned job done.

**Prentiss: WHEN + WHERE?**

**Unknown number: I’ll be in touch, luv. Say your goodbyes in the meantime. It’s more than you gave me.**

She leans her head back into the seat and drops her phone. Then she allows herself the panicked sobbing that she’s been fighting since she saw the flowers. She should have known: she was never the innocent girl Reid has imagined in his mind. She played along with it – got lost in it herself for a while – but she’s always been more trouble than that. To believe that she could have this life with a good man, a family, is to ignore all the shitty things that she did before they came to her. It’s a denial of who she really is. She doesn’t deserve it. And now she may have condemned them as well, and they _certainly_ don’t deserve it.

She stops her crying, wipes away her worthless self-pity, and revs the engine to life again. It’s time to face up to her deeds and save whatever she can along the way.


	41. Chapter 41

Reid and Casey are fine. Emily finds them playing in the living room with Reid’s Glock tugged into his waistband at his back covered by his t-shirt. Casey grins at her mother and makes grabby hands until Emily picks her up, but Reid’s eyes are shadowed and he can’t muster a smile if his life depended on it.

“Tell me,” he demands quietly as Emily kisses and cuddles their daughter too close making her squirm.

“Not in front of her,” she whispers back with a plea in her eyes.

“She won’t understand any of it.”

“Still…”

They wait until Casey’s nap time, put her down in the turquoise room, and watch her fuss and eventually settle into deep, long sighs. Emily can’t resist touching her, brushing her fine tangles, outlining her fingers, playing with her tiny feet as they twitch while she dreams.

“Emily…” Reid warns quietly behind her, and she turns with a sigh and makes them both walk back to the living room.

She tells him everything there, every molecule of her shame attached to Ian Doyle. The undercover brief, how she went so far beyond those boundaries, the way she wormed her way into his bed and later, his heart, his son and what she did to ensure his survival… everything. She watches as Reid tries to control his responses to it all – the thin line his mouth takes, the increasing pressure that turns his lips white, the blush he has no hope of controlling as it spreads across his face, down his throat, and up to his ears. His eyes drop from hers when she tells him that Doyle proposed and she accepted, and she’s overcome with a cold finality when he does it, as if he’s closing a door on her that she won’t be able to reopen. When she’s done, she waits. And waits, and waits. Reid remains silent and still, staring at Casey’s abandoned toys on the floor but miles away from them both. 

“Say something,” she chokes when she can’t stand the silence any longer.

“What is there to say?”

“Anything. Everything,” she hisses in frustration. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Spencer. Don’t shut me out – this is too important.”

“It is,” he snaps and then glares at her. “Important enough that I should’ve known long before now, when it endangers our family.”

“Would it have made a difference?” She’s shaking as she asks the question, afraid that his love isn’t strong enough to withstand her checkered morality.

“Yes. It absolutely would.”

She staggers back a little and a soft noise escapes her, like a knife slipped between someone’s ribs when they aren’t paying attention. She bleeding now, all over the place even though it is invisible. She loves him – she can’t stop that – but perhaps he can. Maybe he will after this.

“I should’ve been honest…” she stutters.

“I told you everything,” he frowns, expression hard. “Before you decided to be with me. I wanted that to be an informed choice on your part.”

He’s trying to make this about honesty, but the twisted agony he’s attempting to hide is jealousy, pure and simple. She wants to be angry at him for that, to yell at him that _that_ is the wrong response: Doyle was never anything more than a mark, and Reid is _everything._ How could he convince himself otherwise in the span of a few minutes?

“It was in the past, Spencer, and it was a painful time for me. I wanted to forget it. It almost felt like it wasn’t real once I experienced what we had together-”

“You slept with a suspect to make a case,” he hisses too loudly and then looks around as if someone will tell him to be quieter. “You told him you loved him. You agreed _to marry him_ …”

“It wasn’t _real,_ Spencer!”

“But this is? How am I supposed to tell the difference now?! How _do you_ know the difference?” His voice is too loud and it echoes around the room. A moment later, Casey makes a thin cry from the nursery and Reid sighs as he slouches and lopes off to calm her instead of dealing with Emily.

She follows him and leans against the doorframe listening to him coo to his daughter. She desperately wants to wrap her arms around him and cling to his back, telling him that _everything_ about this is different, but she has no idea what words to use in order to convince him.

“S’okay, Casey. Go back to sleep, little bird. Daddy’s sorry he’s so loud… he interrupted dreamtime, didn’t he? Shhhh…”

“I love you, Spencer,” she whispers at his back, and he stiffens at the sound but doesn’t turn to face her. “I’ve never loved this way before, that’s how I know the difference. I didn’t lose myself when I was undercover – I never loved Ian, even though I can admit that he wasn’t a one-dimensional person. He was good to me, good to his son. But I never forgot the horror he inflicted on others. It’s the same horror he’s threatening now. That’s the proof: he’ll kill me for what I’ve done to him.”

Reid turns then, expression crumpled into something sore and pained, but trying to keep it all under control.

“He stopped loving me when I betrayed him, and now that love has turned into something murderous. In his mind, that’s a natural progression. If you stop loving me…” She chokes and has to swallow a few times before she can continue. “You’ll grieve, you’ll get angry, but you won’t throw all of it away in a fit of spite. You won’t try to destroy me. That’s not you.”

She steps closer and rings her hands together, still trying to be quiet as Casey drifts off, but wanting to shout, to plead, to make him _see_ with all the urgency she’s ever felt in her life.

“I know… this must feel like Simone all over again, but orders of magnitude more egregious. This love isn’t a trick, Spencer, I swear. You taught me how to do it – I didn’t know how to before.” She sighs as she stares at his devastation. “Nothing is more important to me than this world we’ve created together. Nothing. And nothing feels more real. I’ll die protecting it, you, and Casey, even if this… bullshit with Doyle irrevocably changes us.”

He just stares back at her. She lifts her hands and lets them drop in frustration.

“That’s all I can give you, Spencer. I can’t make you believe it. I can’t convince you that I’m not an accomplished liar. But _I’m yours_ \- I always will be – and because I am, I’ll fucking fix this. I’ll make sure Doyle never comes for you or Casey. All of the skills that made me a successful undercover operative – all of the things that are making you look at me the way you are right now – are the reasons why I can make you two safe. You can hate me for it all you want after that’s done.”

Reid sags against the crib. “I don’t hate you,” he says miserably. “I just… why didn’t you tell me? I thought I knew you… and it turns out there’s this whole life you lived that I don’t understand. Now I know how your Mom felt walking through our front door and discovering Casey. This is big, Emily. It’s far too big to pretend that it doesn’t matter.”

“Spence,” she sobs and sucks it all back in with great effort. Then she whispers, “You _do_ know me. I didn’t tell you because… I wanted you to love me _so much_ , and… it’s hard to love around _this_. I’m fucking ashamed of it, Spencer. Can’t you see that? More than Marty, more than my pregnancy when I was fifteen… I HATE this about me. I didn’t want you to make a decision about whether you hated it as well. It was a cowardly choice, and I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you with it. I really am.”

He takes a step towards her and then hesitates, lacing his fingers together too tightly. Then he takes another halting step, and then another. She watches him helplessly as he fights himself, and then closes the final few feet between them to pull her into an unsure hug. Her arms snap around him and she breathes out in stuttered disbelief, burying her face into the shoulder of his shirt. He smells like books and baby shampoo and every damned thing that signifies home to her. He’s her fucking backbone, and without him she’ll crumple to the ground, useless and senseless as life goes on around her.

“This jabs at so many of my insecurities at once… I can’t even describe it,” he mumbles against her. She cringes and tries to curl him closer, to disprove what he’s feeling _about her_ with her presence. Stupid, really.

“I’m sorry,” she gulps. “I’ll fix it. I promise.”

“What do we do now?”

“ _We_ aren’t doing anything. I’m gonna set a trap for him and put him into some deep, dark hole somewhere.”

Reid pulls away from her suddenly, face creased in anger. “That didn’t work before. Why will it work now?”

“It’ll work because it has to.”

“Emily, that’s a fatuous absurdity. Be serious.”

“I am.” Her spine stiffens. “It’s my mess, I’ll deal with it.”

He sighs in frustration and lets her go. “That’s not how this works,” he growls. “You can’t lone-wolf this situation. That’s the sort of thinking that got you into this mess. I’m in this now. Even if I didn’t hopelessly love you, I’m an FBI agent. Don’t think that you can ask me to be a bystander here. It’s dismissive and foolish. You can’t keep me in the dark when it comes to protecting you and Casey.”

She stands staring at him, not sure that she knows how to react. “You still…” she gulps and can’t spit out the word ‘love’ at all. He looks at her incredulously and then rolls his eyes at her unkindly, as if he simply doesn’t have time for this right now.

“Jesus, Em, we’re not as fragile as you seem to think we are. I’m gonna get angry about that later, when we aren’t being threatened by a case from your past. Can we focus on the immediate problem please? Stop infuriating me…”

"Uh… okay…” she says quietly, blinking in confusion, not sure what has happened in the past twenty seconds. 

“Now,” he states firmly, eyebrows lowering and crossing his arms in front of him. “How are we going to catch him?”

They move back to the living room and Emily tells him about the deal she made with Doyle concerning his son.

“You actually know where Declan is?” Reid seems incredulous.

“Relatively,” she sighs. “I’ve always operated under the rule that the less I know about Declan’s life, the better. Now it seems that pigeon has come home to roost with a vengeance.”

“Well, if we’re only using the idea of Declan as a lure, we’re going to need a bulletproof net to catch Doyle. If we miss, we’re endangering a lot of people.”

Emily looks away from him, knowing that’s a condemnation of her decision. She tries not to feel defensive – at the time, she felt it was the best choice she could make – but she has to admit that her plan always put Declan at risk, if not the family she didn’t know she’d eventually have.

“We need to loop Hotch into this,” he concludes. She looks up sharply.

“Absolutely not.”

His eyebrows lower even further. It seems like that may become a permanent state of being for them. “Justify that to me.”

She’s flustered. Her reasoning is that she’s embarrassed that this case has come back to bite her in the ass, and she’s also wary of telling anyone else about the questionable lengths she went to for it. But that’s not an argument Reid is going to buy.

“It’s not a BAU case,” she says lamely, and Reid’s expression tells her so.

“He’s an escaped, international terrorist. If Interpol knew he was stateside, they’d have to call in the Bureau anyway. You were an agent in the original case – Hotch wouldn’t have to break a sweat getting this kicked over to the Unit.”

She falls silent, glaring at him. She’s not going to say the words… he’s smart enough to figure it out on his own.

“You don’t want him to know what you did,” Reid sighs.

“I don’t want ANYONE to know.”

“That’s no longer on the table,” he grimaces and looks away. She shrivels a little inside when he does it. “The two of us can’t take him by ourselves. We need strategies and options, and failing that, we need a bunch of people who can knock down doors and subdue with extreme prejudice. We need _a team._ ”

“I’ve seen you subdue quite well when you put your mind to it,” she smiles, trying for a moment of levity, but he just turns back to her and looks unbelievably tired and angry again. He’s not going to forgive her for this any time soon, no matter how much he loves her. That makes her chest seize up, and she coughs to cover the painful hiss she wants to make instead. “Okay, okay… I get it.”

“We can call him now. Have him come here. He can decide how many we have to loop into the whys and wherefores.”

“Fine,” she sighs, and Reid leaves her to find his phone. He makes the call out of earshot and she wonders what he tells their boss, but then decides maybe her ego can’t handle that knowledge right now. When he comes back, he sits at the other end of the room and just stares at the silent phone still in his hands.

“So?” she asks eventually, hoping to break the heavy silence with _something._

“He’s on his way.”

“That’s not what I meant.

“I know what you meant,” he sighs and waits. “Don’t ask me to bounce back from this like it’s nothing, Emily.”

“I’m not asking for that,” she responds too quickly, feeling defensive and alone. “But you’re so good at holding onto anger. I’d rather fight with you than watch you simmer in your thoughts silently.”

He looks up at her then, cold and unreadable in a way that he hasn’t been to her in years. “Well, I guess we’re both going to disappoint each other today, aren’t we?”

She does hiss then, because it hurts just as he intends it to, and she can’t find a way to be all right with it. He’s angry, he’s frightened, he’s hurt – she understands that. But she won’t let him beat her relentlessly with this sin without fighting back. Or fighting _for them._ It’s not how she’s built.

“Spencer, we need to talk to each other if we’re ever gonna work this sh-”

“Not now!” 

He snaps and then stands, moving too quickly as his face reddens, and retreats to hide in Casey’s nursery. She knows she can’t follow him; he’s not ready. She sits alone, miserable and curled into herself until Hotch arrives forty-five minutes later.

Hotch listens without reaction as she retells her humiliation to him. Reid looks numb and grey all over. When she’s done, and to her private relief, Hotch doesn’t pass any judgment whatsoever – he just launches into ideas about how to catch Doyle. An hour and a half later they have a plan. It’s a good one, or as good as can be expected in this scenario. The team will be briefed but Emily’s personal details about her undercover operation will be omitted. She’ll wait for Doyle to make contact, and they’ll bait the trap. If all goes to plan, Doyle won’t know he’s been caught until it’s all over. Reid insists that Emily cannot be a part of the tactical team assigned to take Doyle into custody and he won’t be moved on the subject. Hotch regards him for a minute and then just nods his agreement, and Emily knows she could talk until she turned blue but _that_ part of the plan is done. Hotch sends out a text to the team for an early morning briefing, and then leaves them to their oppressive silence and glaring. Smart guy.

She can’t eat and she can’t rest, wanting to be moving and putting their plan into action rather than waiting for another disaster to shatter over their heads. Reid watches her pace from the corner of his eye at the other end of the living room, and eventually sighs.

“We should get some rest.”

“You think I can _sleep_ right now?”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugs and leaves her, heading to the bedroom by himself. And her heart breaks as she watches him go. He’s never been this stiff with her before. _Forgive me. Tell me you’ll be able to forgive me for this in time… please…_

When she finds the courage to crawl into bed next to him, it’s hours later and he’s still wide awake. She slips between the sheets like they are poisoned and makes no attempt to reach for him. He doesn’t reach for her either. They lie awake all night and pretend that the other isn’t there, and she thinks, _I always knew I’d ruin this somehow..._


	42. Chapter 42

It takes Doyle two days to contact Emily again, and while they wait, Hotch insists that they be protected, so Reid, Emily, and Casey end up living at the Unit. The team is told what they need to know but the distance between Reid and Emily is so obvious that they’d be fools to believe there wasn’t something else going on. Reid is territorial about Casey refusing to let her go until she squeals and cries from the well-intentioned smothering. She wants to play, she wants her toys, she wants the home she knows, she wants her mother… His heart breaks and then he hands a screaming Casey off to J.J. who coos and leaves him alone in the conference room. 

He wants everything that Casey wants and more. He wants his life back, but instead he is forced to sit and wait on a stranger and do nothing towards defending those he loves. A stranger who loved Emily, a stranger who had her, thought he knew her, and was confident she loved him back. A stranger who wanted to share his life with her. Bile flavors the back of his throat as his unceasing brain imagines her with him, this faceless stranger. He imagines her responding to him, arching in his hands, he imagines her voice when she tells him she loves him, he imagines them curled together planning a future and her expression when she tells him it’s never been like this with anyone else…

He barely makes it to the washroom in time, but when he gets there the sensation stalls, circling his guts and making them lurch when he’s not in complete control of them. And so, he ends up waiting on _this_ as well.

“What happened between you two?” J.J. finds a quiet moment and slips beside him like a whisper. “I’ve never seen you this far apart from each other while in the same place in… well, _ever._ ”

He grabs her hand and holds it lightly in his; a poor substitute for the one he really wants to hold. “It’s not my story to tell, Jennifer,” he says quietly. “It’s hers.”

J.J.’s eyebrows lower in a way that doesn’t fit with her pretty face. “If she hurt you, Spence… you or Casey. If she brought this on you-”

“She lied, Jen, that’s all. She’d never put Casey at risk on purpose. You know that.”

“And what about you? Did she put _you_ at risk on purpose?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know a lot right now, and I’m having a hard time with that.”

J.J. can sense something in him, and her frown fades as she lets the topic drop and pulls him in for a silent hug instead. He sighs and closes his eyes into her shoulder, feeling the first breath of relief in what feels like days. When she lets him go, she murmurs, “We’ll fix this.” Everyone’s promising to ‘fix’ it, but he has no confidence that they will.

“Talk to her,” Hotch mumbles some time later as Reid and Casey play with some of Morgan’s toys on the floor of his office. Reid looks up at him hard, but Hotch is gazing out over the bullpen to where Emily is sitting at her old desk staring into space. Reid can’t remember the last time he sought her out, but she looks as if she’s deflated – half herself – and his heart batters against his ribs despite everything else.

“You two need to do this together,” Hotch rumbles, still looking at Emily.

“How can I trust her?” he spits.

Then Hotch switches his focus to Reid, and eventually Casey, jutting his chin in her direction. “She’s why. No matter what happens between you both, Casey is the one thing upon which you will completely agree. And she’s the best part of you.”

Reid feels his face flame. He’s ashamed of his anger but it’s not enough to stop it. “She _lied,_ Aaron…”

“We all lie,” Hotch murmurs sadly and looks away. “Neither you nor I have ever been undercover, Reid. I don’t think we have any idea what it was like for her.”

“So, I should give her blanket absolution for this because _I don’t know what she went through?_ ” His voice is sharp, petulant. Casey looks up at him and stills, her tiny brow furrowing.

Hotch sighs and bends down to collect Casey up into his arms – one frowner to another. “I’m not giving you advice other than to talk to her. Ask her about it. I’m certain she’d tell you everything. She wants to confess.”

“She already told me plenty. And the rest… I don’t want to hear about the rest.” Reid can feel a deep grimace settling into his face.

“Perhaps you should ask yourself _why_ you don’t want to hear about it,” Hotch says after a long moment of nothing, and then turns with Casey chirping against his chest and walks out of the room.

Reid looks out over the bullpen back to where Emily is still staring blankly at nothing. His anger flares, but so does something else, deep and slow, surging with the power of history. His heart squeezes sharply and releases, creating a unique pain he cannot find a word to describe. One hand idly rises and rubs his chest over his heart to ease the sensation. He thinks he knows the answer to the ‘why’ Hotch mentioned, and it makes him want to hide away – from himself and from her. He doesn’t want to set loose those sorts of feelings because he’s afraid of where they will take him. He’s on the verge of losing everything. Isn’t it better to be _on the verge_ rather than sailing over the cliff to crash on the rocks below?

He doesn’t talk to her. The opportunity is there, but he lets it pass by. He’s a coward, and he finally has someone new to be angry with.

\----- 

Doyle eventually makes contact and they set the trap. There’s a lavish home and a dummied-up child with a history in the area schools, sports teams, and after school programs. There are caregivers who are actually undercover tactical assault operatives on loan from the NSA. The neighborhood gets cleared out and replaced by plainclothes agents from every known agency: the Bureau, NSA, Homeland Security, Interpol, even a few guys from the Army Rangers who owe Hotch a favor. The net around the target is airtight.

They wait.

Emily is grounded back at Quantico and spends hours pacing Garcia’s lair where she is patched into every comm and video feed from the agents on scene. Reid is there as well, sitting at the back of the room, sometimes with Casey and sometimes without, watching Emily as she quietly frets like a caged thing. He knows she wants to be a part of it, out there ensuring the outcome not because of superior ability but because she needs to be _doing something_ about it. Reid understands that impulse intimately, but what he also recognizes and _doesn’t_ understand is that a part of her loves this. The chase, the danger, the physicality of armed hunts that have always scared him… She wants to be out there in the middle of it so much that it’s practically rolling off her as she moves. He’s not a factor in this version of her at all. He doesn’t even recognize her in this stalking, growling creature.

They wait and wait. It’s not hours but days. No one has slept, everyone is snapping. Casey has reached the end of her good behavior and now her cries echo through the halls of the sixth floor more often than not. Then, the package arrives addressed to Lauren Reynolds. Security scans it and then sends it to the Unit where everyone gathers in the conference room as Emily unseals it. It’s just a photograph but it might as well be an explosion for the way it alters the room. It’s a blurry picture of Reid and Casey taken through Hotch’s office window. He must have used a telephoto lens because there’s no easy roost close to the building to get that shot. The clothes they are wearing are from two days ago. Emily’s hands shake as she flips the photo.

“ _‘I knew you’d break our agreement, Lauren. I’ll see you soon.’_ ” Emily reads and then sags hard against the conference table. “Shit…”

The room is silent and Reid closes his eyes as his heart drops in a sickly dive within him – no longer on the verge. He hears Garcia make a tiny ‘Oh’ sound and then Hotch steps forward as he always does.

“Garcia, I need CCTV feeds for the Metro, the VRE, Amtrak, bus depots, Dulles, Reagan, Baltimore/Washington, LaGuardia, JFK, and the New York Port Authority for at least the last forty-eight hours. Send Doyle’s picture and details to the TSA and DCPD as well as Virginia State Troopers. Also send a flash alert to the toll authorities for the surrounding states – if Doyle’s still here, I want to make it hard for him to move around.”

“Uh… Sir, yes sir,” Garcia blinks and then hustles away in a flurry of silk.

“Morgan, trace this package. I want to know everything about it.”

“You got it, Hotch.” Morgan pulls the photo and box away from a shell-shocked Emily, and then disappears after Garcia.

“J.J., Rossi, I’ll need you to start combing through the video Garcia collects. Our first objective is to determine if Doyle is still in the area or not. That photo is two days old, which could mean that he’s already fled to a safer location to regroup, or that he’s busy doing something else rather than spying on Emily. Both options involve movement. Let’s nail that down.”

“He’s not afraid of us,” Emily murmurs, eyes glazed and staring at nothing. “He won’t run because he’s not scared of being caught… He doesn’t believe we can do it.”

“Then that’s something we can leverage to our advantage,” Hotch says and lays a hand on her shoulder which makes her jolt. All Reid can do is sit and watch it unfold. He thinks, _I used to ease her…_ , but can’t muster the energy to do anything beyond that. He wants to find Casey and never let her go.

“What are you gonna do?” Rossi asks.

“I’m going to arrange for a protective detail for Emily, Reid, and Casey. And I have to call back the agents around the dummy house. They’ll have to be debriefed, see if they noticed anything unusual in hindsight. Doyle got onto it somehow… Then I’ll have to make a call about Declan. He’ll have to be scooped up and relocated. New identity, new home, everything.”

Emily makes a mournful noise and turns away from them all. Rossi and J.J. duck their eyes and decide it’s a good time to leave. Reid watches as they exit and then as Hotch turns to him and arches an eyebrow meaningfully. He knows what he’s asking of him, but Reid thins his lips instead and stays where he is. Hotch sighs and turns back to Emily again, a hand gently returning to her shoulder.

“Declan,” she mumbles wetly. “I’ve ruined his life…”

“You saved his life. Doyle’s the one ruining it.”

Emily shakes horribly for a second. Reid feels his mouth drop open – he’s never seen her do something like that before. Then her back straightens. “We have to kill him.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Hotch murmurs. Reid is stunned where he sits, watching this woman he doesn’t know come alive before him.

“Are you saying you won’t help?” Emily turns and glares at Hotch until he takes a step back. “He’s threatening my family, my _child_ , his child… I thought you’d understand this.”

Hotch’s eyes drop for a split second and Reid is a little disgusted that Emily’s using Foyet’s memory to manipulate this man who’s already stuck out his neck for them. “We’re not there yet.”

“Maybe you aren’t,” she hisses and walks away. She never once looks back to see if Reid is with her. It’s as if he’s not a part of this at all.

“Still think she wants absolution?” Reid whispers after a moment of punishing silence. Hotch glances back to him, stunned. Reid gets up from the table on numb legs. He can’t think of anything but Casey now. “This is who she is. I fell in love with a mirage,” he shakes his head as he brushes past Hotch and out of the room.

When he finds his daughter, he buries his face in her shirt, breathes her in, and hitches as quietly as he can until his heartbreak passes. She grabs his hair and babbles a chorus of ‘ahhs’ as if it’ll make everything better. He wishes it were that simple. He wishes that the best part of him and Emily was the answer to it all.


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note there is a discussion about rape in this chapter.

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Garcia gets clear, video evidence of Doyle boarding a flight out of Dulles one day before the photo was delivered to Quantico. Morgan traces the package to a big-box delivery service with alarming tracking capabilities, and they discover that it would’ve been delivered earlier if a sorting machine at one of their distribution hubs hadn’t gone offline for a few hours. Doyle wasn’t being cagey for once; he’d left his marker and then left town. 

The bad news is he could be anywhere in the world by now. Garcia’s trail goes cold after Dulles. When the flight lands in Lisbon, Doyle isn’t seen disembarking, but, as Garcia points out with disdain, the Portuguese authorities haven’t been forthcoming with their security footage. There are lots of reasons why he could’ve disappeared: he changed his appearance, he knows the area and how to avoid detection, he bought someone off, or maybe he just got lucky. But since Doyle is no longer stateside, Emily, Reid, and Casey are allowed to go home, with a twenty-four hour detail camped out in front of their building. They stumble back into the apartment and it feels as if it’s been years since they’ve been there. Casey is delighted, wiggling until Reid puts her down and she can scoot across the floor like an ecstatic earthworm. Reid just stares at her for a lack of anything better to do. When Emily speaks, he almost jumps in surprise.

“I’ll go see if there’s anything still edible in the fridge.” Her eyes flick to his and then away before she can read anything in his stare. He just grunts and she shuffles to the kitchen.

They eat in silence. Casey is happy but still wary of her parents’ distance. She flits from chatting at her toys to holding her arms out to her parents, one after another, trying to alter their mood with hugs and displays that are the only solutions she knows. In the end, she wears herself out and starts to cry. Reid grabs her up and takes her to the turquoise room, soothing her with lies that come easily.

“Now, now, little bird. We’re home. We’re safe and we’re home and everything will be all right after a good night’s sleep. You’ll see. Remember your room? Remember the stars? I bet they’ve missed you. It’s all okay… you’re back with the stars again…”

She stills eventually and he watches her sleep for a time. When he turns to leave, he finds Emily staring at him from the doorway. Her expression is the definition of agony, and it steals his breath from him before he can think to be angry.

“We have to do something…” she whispers, but he shushes her and pushes them both back to the living room.

“If by ‘something’ you mean ‘killing’, I’m not sure-” he starts.

“I mean _about us_ ,” she interrupts and stops him dead in his tracks. “I can’t stand this silence, Spencer. This heavy _nothing_ that’s spreading between us… please…”

Her eyes are glassy and she seems _so much_ like the woman he fell in love with in this moment that he has an instant of dissonance that makes him shake his head viciously. “I don’t even know you. This last week has proven that. I don’t recognize the person who was trapped on the sixth floor with me all this time.”

“Well then, _ask_ about what you don’t understand. Ask me anything – I’ll tell you.”

“Will it be the truth?” he snaps and feels ashamed. Her lips twist as she stares at him, but she stays silent. “You like this, don’t you? A part of you likes it…”

Her expression collapses and she looks confused. “What? Likes what?”

“Chasing him. Hunting him. When you turned to Hotch and asked him to help kill Doyle, you didn’t hesitate at all. To you, it’s a logical outcome here, and you don’t mind that.”

Her cheeks darken and she ducks her face until her hair partially covers it. “If you do it long enough, if you’re any good at it, you get addicted to the action a little. I won’t lie about that.”

“And the killing?”

Her expression hardens. “How can you ask that? No, you never get used to that, and _no_ , I don’t like it. Jesus fucking Christ, Spence… Just who do you think I am now?!”

“I don’t know, alright? I really don’t know anymore!” He sneers but she doesn’t back down at all. She storms right up to him and pokes him square in the chest over his heart.

“I’m the girl waiting under your goddamned tree, Spencer.” She’s angry but her voice comes out wet. “That’s who I’ve been waiting to be my whole life!”

He wants to believe her, he wants to believe her so damned much. But what she says and what she does seem mutually exclusive now and he can’t make sense of it.

“You gave yourself away…” he chokes, thinking of her moaning for another man. “To someone you hate.”

“Is this because of another man’s dick? Really? Yeah, Spencer, he stuck his dick in me long before I met you. It didn’t mean anything then and it doesn’t now!”

He rears away from her as the anger takes full control of him. “Doesn’t mean anything?!? When I’m with you, when I’m inside you… it’s the only time I feel whole.”

He glares at her, vibrating from the plunge of the fall he can no longer control. Emily freezes in place, surprise splashed across her.

“There’s always been a place in me that was… unfulfilled. I tried, all my life, to fill it with knowledge, or achievements, or with other people… But it remained this dull, empty space and I figured that there was something just _wrong_ with me that I couldn’t solve it.”

One of Emily’s hands goes to her mouth as if to block words from escaping. Her eyes get huge as she stares.

“But when I was finally with you… for those fleeting moments, again and again… I was _more_. We were more. You start as individuals… two bodies, but somehow… when you come together, it’s what you’ve been searching for as long as you can remember. You’re made better. And then that _better_ became real in Casey.” He jabs his finger in the direction of the nursery. “So, don’t stand there and tell me that sex _means nothing_ , no matter who you’re with. Don’t insult me that way.”

Her eyes shimmer and then a tear slips loose down her cheek. She wipes it away quickly, as if he won’t notice. “But… there are different kinds, Spencer. I didn’t love him-”

“He loved _you!_ ” Reid hisses, face creasing in pain. “He wanted you. Maybe he even felt as I did when he was with you. And you’re laughing at him now, hoping that I’ll buy it’s _different_ with me! I don’t want to sympathize with someone who’s sworn to kill my daughter, but it seems like we have some things in common.”

“You have nothing in common with Ian Doyle!”

“I was going to ask you to marry me,” he says quietly, frame slouching in defeat. “But you already said yes to someone you’d prefer to see dead, so it makes the prospect a lot less compelling…”

She staggers a little and then reaches out a hand to stabilize herself with the ridge of the sofa. “Spencer…” she sobs. He waits for more, but all she can manage are wet, choking noises.

“Your world has violent, secret, dark corners,” he continues. “And you never let me see them because I can’t be a part of them. And because you love those parts of you, no matter how much you protest. They get you off a little.” He swallows hard. “I’ll never be enough for you, Emily. I fit with a part of you, but not all of you. I’ll never be tough enough, brutal enough. I’ll never get you off the way that chasing after someone like Doyle will. And I can’t live with that, not when you fulfill me so completely.”

She suddenly comes alive, lurching forward and grabbing him into a merciless, hard kiss. He braces himself, one hand on the sofa and the other on her hip, but his jaw clamps shut and he won’t return it. She pulls back with a wet gasp but only far enough to lean her forehead against his, her fingernails digging into his neck painfully.

“You want to know what it was really like?” she whimpers. “Fine. I’ll tell you.”

“Emily-”

“Shut your goddamned mouth, Spencer. It’s my turn now.” She takes a huge breath, and when she lets it go, she starts shaking. Hard. His grip on her hip tightens on instinct as his stomach twists. “You know about Marty, about the number he did on my head. And there was John when I was fifteen – I did what I thought I was supposed to and ended up pregnant and even more ostracized. There were others along the way, but none as disastrous as those two. By the time I made it to the Interpol Terrorism Task Force, I was so emotionally fucked up about men that I couldn’t see straight.”

She’s shaking so hard that it’s vibrating them both. “Emily…” he tries again, not having the will to hurt her as easily as she hurts him.

“I said: Shut. Up. Just… listen.” She twists her head against his and shuts her eyes tightly, squeezing a tear out. “An opportunity came up and I took it. I decided being Doyle’s girlfriend would be no big deal, and it gave me access we never would’ve gotten otherwise. I thought I could handle it, like… I’d been through worse and this would be nothing compared to it. But… fuck…”

She stops, chokes, begins again. “It was… _Jesus, Spence…_ ”

“Emily, stop. Now.”

She’s shaking so hard she’s partially collapsed against his chest and his arms wrap her up because he can’t help himself. Whatever this is, he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t…

“No… no. You t-told me everything. I… I need…”

“I’m sorry, okay?” he shushes. “I’m a jealous idiot. You don’t need to take a jackhammer to your life to ease that. I clearly don’t understand, but you don’t-”

“The only analogy I can think of is that it’s like rape,” she gasps, and he goes completely silent, arms turning to stone around her. “But… your rapist doesn’t h-hold you down or threaten your life. He tells you he loves you. He’s gentle. He says he wants to m-marry you. It’s everything you’ve been told your whole life that you should want. But you break out into a sweat when you hear his feet in the hall outside your room, you panic when he gets on top of you, you fight it and he whispers that he likes it when you’re frisky…”

Reid growls deep and low as he bends to hide his face in her shoulder. He pulls her close even though he’s not sure if he should.

“Each time he was with me, it felt like he stole something from my body. Some… indefinable essence that should’ve been mine to give away. But he took it and I’d never get it back. And still, I didn’t leave. I lived with the panic and the fear and the _disgust_ of him leaking out of me afterwards, and I stayed to make the case. I smiled, I told him he was everything and I allowed him to chip away at whatever hadn’t been destroyed by John and Marty, and I cried when it was safe to cry and I _made the case._ ”

“Emily… fuck… please stop…” he’s crying now, driving his face into her shoulder until his eyes hurt.

“I didn’t have sex for a year after that case ended. I didn’t even touch myself. I didn’t think I’d ever want anything like that again.”

“Emily… _please…_ ” He takes it all back: he and Doyle are nothing alike. He loses all sympathy for a man so clueless as to miss that the woman he loves is abjectly horrified by him.

She pulls back, hand gripping his jaw and directing him to look at her. Her cheeks are wet, as wet as his, and she’s staring at him with a devastation you cannot fake.

“I forced it behind me. I dated. I came to enjoy sex again. I told myself it could’ve been much worse. I had survived and that’s all that mattered.” Her fingers skim through the wetness on his face until she outlines his cheek. “Then I met this… beautiful boy from Nevada…”

He shakes his head and bites his lip to stop the tears, but they fall anyway. He doesn’t want to hear how he fits into this terrible story.

“You didn’t look at me the way other men did – like I was a place they might be able to park their dick if they were lucky. You just seemed _interested_ in general, and as we became friends, I discovered that being interesting was surprisingly erotic. I didn’t know that I’d come to want you so much, Spencer. All I knew in the beginning was that you didn’t treat me the way I expected a man to, and in return, I didn’t treat you like the predator I’d come to believe most men were.”

“I… I wasn’t trying to…” he gulps, feeling like a damned kid all over again.

“I know, baby, I know,” she brushes against his lips and listens as he sighs helplessly at the brief touch. “It took you a long time to go from ‘friend’ to something more. Me too.”

She nips his lips, once and then again. And he catches her with his mouth for a second before letting her go with a huff of shock. He shouldn’t have done that. They are in trouble, she’s just confessed to something terrible and intimate, and he doesn’t know if they are going to make it, so… kissing her shouldn’t have made it to the top of his list so easily.

“Sorry,” he gasps.

“Why? You’re all I want, Spencer, all the time. Even like this when we’re hurting and at each other’s throats…” she whispers back, eyes pleading. “There will never be another for me, do you understand? If we end, I’m throwing in the towel. I’ll be Casey’s Mom and an investigator and who knows what else, but I will leave the loving part of me with you.” She spreads a palm across his chest. “I know when I’m beat.”

“I don’t want us to end,” he breathes before he can think about it. It’s the truth, but he still doesn’t know how they’ll make it happen.

She clasps both sides of his face, fingers digging in too urgently. Her mouth brushes his skin when she speaks.

“We can survive this, Spencer. I lived through Doyle once, I can do it again. Just… don’t give up on me. On us.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near him,” he growls. 

She kisses him, hard and deep, and he gives in because nothing else feels like a smarter option. She slips against his lips, his tongue, his teeth with authority. It feels like ownership, and considering everything that’s happened in the past week, he shouldn’t be as aroused by this as he is. He moans into her, a primal part of him wanting to remind her she’s his, but he tamps down on it until it almost feels like a physical ache in his bones. _It’s not right. She’s not a thing… it’s not right…_

He pulls away with a whine and she stares at him, eyes searching, lips pink as she catches her breath. “What just happened?”

“We… I…” he stutters and shakes his head as his face flames in embarrassment. “I don’t know how to _do_ this. I’m… angry with you, Em. So angry. And I want to destroy Doyle for what he’s put you through. And I’m also aroused… and that’s confusing… because I think I shouldn’t be… and it’s a wonder you’ve ever wanted to be with me given what you’ve experienced… and I never knew and now I feel guilty for all the things I’ve done and-”

“Spencer,” she snaps while shaking his head to regain his focus. “Remember when you told me – right here in this apartment – that we aren’t that fragile? I’ve been clinging to that like a rat in a shipwreck, and I’m telling you the same thing now. I’m not that delicate, and I believe wholeheartedly in the merits of survival. No amount of grit could convince me to give myself to someone I didn’t want. Not again. Survival has taught me my limits. I would never have been with you if it held the risk of traumatizing me further. Believe me.”

His eyes flick to hers and away. She shakes his head again gently, and then steps until he can feel her against him from thighs to biceps.

“That night I came here and made you strip, made you show me your ouroboros, it was pure, 100% undiluted lust. The way you revealed yourself just because I asked you to, your tattoos, the way you shook, how hungry you looked but you kept it all tied down until it was almost painful… god _damn_ , Spencer… you can’t pantomime that kind of desire… I was halfway there even before you reached for me.”

He swallows, eyes flicking to her mouth and away again when he catches himself. _Stop it._ His body gets tight against her, and she knows him too well to mistake it.

She steps even closer and he winces as he tries to shift his hips away. One of her hands falls to his waist and pulls him against her until they grind with a mutual gasp. 

“And when you’re in me…” she licks his lips. “That thing you said about being _more_ for a few moments… After all the parts of me I lost, I never expected to get anything back but a little pleasure now and again. But there’s always more with you. Always. And I’m fucking addicted to it.”

She takes his mouth again, but slowly this time, nipping and teasing until he opens and then going lavish and deep in long pulls. It makes him dizzy when she kisses this way; he forgets to breathe, forgets how the world works, or that there even is a world beyond the two of them. He kisses back, giving up his good intentions and curling her closer as they slip and gasp together. He loves her. Helplessly, hopelessly, and it doesn’t solve anything at all. _But oh, god, Emily…_

“I want you,” he whispers.

“I know.”

“We shouldn’t.”

“Bullshit.”

“You fucking lied to me and I’m angry. Doyle is coming for Casey. I’m terrified and I don’t know what to do to protect my family. And jealousy is making me stupid while my dick does all the thinking for me.” He pulls away to glare at her. “How does this help _anything?_ ”

She pauses and watches him. “It helps because we’re better together. It helps because I think we need to be reminded of the ‘more’ we can be, ‘cause that’s what we should be fighting for.”

His fingers find their way to her face and outline her – temple, cheeks, jaw… “I don’t want to fight you…”

“But we will because we disagree and we won’t hide that from one another,” she says quietly, almost with awe. “That’s why we’re not fragile, Spence. Don’t you see?”

He knocks their heads together gently and closes his eyes, cradling her face in his hands. His anger is cooling, still there, but overrun by the surge of their history together, no doubt as she intended. He can’t fight it; he doesn’t want to fight anything without her anymore.

“Tell me you love me,” he whimpers, eyes still firmly shut. “Tell me that’s real.”

“Like I never thought I could, Spencer,” she whispers back wetly.

He opens his eyes and watches her blink at him. “Am I enough? Now I’ve seen this other side of you, I’m not so sure…”

Her lips close over his and she clutches him too tightly. “I’m the one who should be asking that. Of course you are. You’re so much more than ‘enough’.”

Now for the important question. The one that tells him what to do next…

“Will you let me all the way in?” He holds her face and watches as she rolls the question over in her mind, biting her lip. “Into everything about you, about this? Even if you’re ashamed or I’m angry… Will you accept that risk and allow us to fight it out anyway? Because it really doesn’t matter how much we love each other if there’s no trust.” He stares her down. “I can take care of you, if you’ll let me. Just _let me._ ”

She worries her lip a little while longer and then nods, tears threatening again. He uses the pad of his thumb to draw her lip slowly out from under her teeth. He skims it, back and forth, as a quiet swell grows behind his ribs. It makes him ache with all the pain of the past week, and all the time before she was there when he moved forward alone not knowing any better. But it’s also inexorably mixed with every conversation they’ve ever had, every relieved sigh after a long case, every nerdy moment, and every wordless one wrapped up in each other. And every second of Casey’s existence…

“You’re mine,” he blurts before he realizes it, and his cheeks heat. He keeps stroking her lower lip as her mouth drops open. “Never forget that.”

He doesn’t know who kisses whom after that, but they curl around each other, grasping and slipping with all the tension of the past week driving them onward. He doesn’t try to stop it this time; he knows there are worse things they could do to each other right now, and he believes she might be right about reminding themselves of what they’re fighting for. He doesn’t have to like this, or the new things he knows about her, but the things he does like far outweigh them. He has to believe that’s what counts. His anger still simmers below the surface and it makes him rougher than he should be, more demanding. He shakes himself from a fog of furious lust, finding them naked, sweaty, and tangled half falling off their bed as he brutally moves in her. He has no memory of how they got here, if he initiated it or if she did. He immediately twitches and stops, horrified at himself and arches up and away from her as she looks flushed and confused, reaching for him.

“What? Spence-”

“Sorry… I’m so sorry… I shouldn’t have…” he stutters breathlessly, chest heaving as his body screams from the process he’s subverted.

“What are you talking about?”

“ _This!_ ” he hisses. “I don’t know how we got here! I’m… being too forceful… too possessive. I don’t want… after what you told me-”

“Stop,” she reaches for him and drags him back down with surprising strength. “Don’t treat me like a broken thing. That’s worse than the memories. I am _me_ , Spence, not my traumas. You’ve been this way with me before, remember? And I’ve never once wanted to tell you ‘no’…”

“I never want to hurt you, Em,” he murmurs as she wrestles him back to her mouth, tongue seeking him out and igniting him again.

“You haven’t, and you won’t. I know that for a fact,” she breathes into him as she buries her hands in his hair in the way that makes him squirm. “Unless you’re set on leaving me like this, all spun up with you pulsing inside and making us both uncomfortable…”

“No,” he kisses her, one hand grabbing her hip and pulling her tight as the other braces the headboard when he starts his rhythm again. “Not my plan…”

They shift and throb together, legs skimming the sheets, fingers and teeth scratching whatever they can find as they moan. He loses himself again, sinking into her damp skin, her heated grasp, and the way she keens under him when he’s not pressing her down as if he’s trying to make them one. He forces a hand between them as he throbs into her, wiggling and skimming until she bursts unexpectedly, shocking them both. He covers her mouth with his as she cries out, trying to avoid waking their daughter, but it’s also part of the ‘more’ he feels: like their combined energy is circling in an endless, perfect loop between them. She wraps her legs around him, tightens, gets impossibly wet and he can’t hold on any longer. His mouth breaks away from hers when he gasps, stretching over her as she pulls him close, and loses it with a few quick rolls of his hips. His eyes are closed, his face wet from tears he doesn’t remember. He feels her fingers knead into his tangles as he tries to figure out breathing again and she murmurs things he can’t hear over the roar of blood in his ears. His chest stutters out a handful of painful gusts until he sags into her and feels like he’ll never move again. Their troubles seem very far away from him in this moment and it’s blissful.

“Spencer…”

Slowly, he shifts, turning in the mess of sheets and pillows to find her staring at him, hair strewn all over the place and chuckling in a way that suggests she may have been calling his name for some time.

“Ugh…”

“It’s been too long,” she whispers simply, watching him and smiling. One of her hands rises from beneath the sheets and tucks some tangles away from his face. He stares back at her, living just _for this_ until he can find the energy to push forward again.

“He’s coming for Casey,” he murmurs eventually, hating the way it erases her smile. “How are we going to handle it?”

She sighs, punching her head back into the pillows and looking at the ceiling. When she speaks again, her voice is harder. “That depends. How far are you willing to go?”

He huffs loudly and considers her question. “If it comes down to Doyle’s life or Casey’s, it’s not a question at all. But I’m not willing to let our first and only option be straight-up assassination. We’re better than that, Emily. We have to be better than that…”

She turns to look at him, fondness and cynicism warring in her features. “I don’t know if I’m better than that, Spence.”

“You are.” He reaches for her and cups her cheek. “It’s just harder, that’s all.”

“We might only get one shot at this. Do you really want to bet Casey’s life on our ability to _just wound_ him?”

He feels his eyebrows lower. “He’s not getting Casey. He’s not getting you. He’s not getting a single damned thing he wants. Believe me.”

She sighs, grabbing his hand and lacing her fingers through it. “He’s already got something he wants…”

Reid nods, guts sinking. “He left the U.S. so you’d chase him.”

She nods as well. “He knows me. And he’s not stupid. He never did any business in North America – he has no allies or useful contacts here. But in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa? That’s a different story. And law enforcement can be bought in many of those places. The world is big and there are plenty of holes to hide in if you have a few friends to help you out along the way.”

His stomach heaves ominously. He can see what she’s thinking… “You’re not leaving me behind.”

She blinks and starts to say something, but he leans up on an elbow and looms over her.

“You’re not. Don’t run away, back into that life, and tell yourself you’re doing it to keep me and Casey safe. That _cannot_ be how this works. Not now.”

“Be logical about this,” she pleads, expression cracking. “One of us has to survive for Casey. Doyle doesn’t want you, or Casey – not really. He wants me. If I go after him and he puts me down, it’s over.” She raises a hand to silence him when he begins to angrily interrupt. “But if _you_ go after him and fail, he’ll still come for me. If we both die, who will be there for Casey, Spencer?”

He can’t think about Casey being orphaned. He shakes his head to clear the image of her crying in the arms of strangers. But he also can’t handle the idea of Emily setting off across the globe to die, and that’s how this will end if she goes it alone. He _will not_ let her do this. He won’t give away Casey’s mother just because the odds are better that way.

“No,” he growls, too angrily and too loudly. “After everything we’ve said and promised to each other tonight, you can’t ask this of me. Either we’re together or we’re not, Em. For better or worse. _That’s_ how things are, so make your choice because I will not stand aside in this. I do not accept the options you are offering: I’m not picking a love to sacrifice.”

She stares at him for a while in silence, and as she does, he feels as though he can see her aging before his eyes. She doesn’t challenge him; doesn’t tell him he’s being impractical or foolish. She doesn’t even tell him he’s not suited to this, which, although cruel, would be accurate. She just stares and stares, gaze sweeping over him slowly. Then she closes her eyes and draws out a long, wet sigh that makes her shudder.

“Okay,” she breathes.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, we do this together. It’s a bad plan, but you’re right: I can’t ask you to trust me and then not trust you. I’m in it with you forever.” A tear slips free and is lost in the pillow beneath her. “Forever, Spencer.”

He pulls her into his chest and lets a wet sigh of his own loose as he shuts his eyes and buries his face in her hair. “Thank you,” he breathes with relief, half in shock that she chose the way she did. 

They rock each other in silence for a while before discussing their next move. They have a lot to do: target possible locations Doyle would flee to, arrange for travel and supplies as they need them, ask J.J. or Hotch to take Casey in while they work… Eventually, exhaustion drags them both down and Reid sleeps dreamlessly for the first time since this began, wrapped around Emily in their bed. 

He wakes to the sound of Casey whimpering over the baby monitor and rises on instinct even before his eyes can focus.

“Em…” he mumbles and pats backward to her side of the mattress. “It’s feedin’ time at the zoo…”

His hand hits nothing but flat sheets and he turns to see that he’s alone. Casey continues sobbing over the speaker on the bedside table and there’s no sound of Emily cooing at her in the nursery. Reid blinks and rubs his eyes, finding it hard to focus in the early dawn light.

There is a piece of paper on Emily’s pillow. He picks it up with shaking hands, body anticipating what his mind won’t accept. All it says is _‘I’m sorry’_ in Emily’s handwriting.

Then he’s racing through the apartment, naked and frantic, yelling her name as Casey wails in the nursery. On the table next to the front door, he gets confirmation: she’s left her badge, i.d., bank and credit cards, the keys to her condo and car, her cell phone, and a paper with a list of passwords and PIN numbers. Nothing else. They are all lined up neatly so he wouldn’t have to go looking. He leans hard against the table, his legs going watery and threatening to drop him. He sobs out her name, just once, and then the tears come silently as he is irrevocably broken. Later inspection of the apartment will reveal that she left everything behind but her guns and a small go bag. And a photo of Casey is missing from the mantle. She walks out of his life taking only that which she absolutely needs in order to survive. Apparently, he didn’t make the cut.


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay in updating. My laptop died spectacularly with several unpublished chapters of this story trapped on its hard drive. I have been forced to rewrite them from memory which is both time consuming and disheartening. I'm doing my best to get back on track but it will take some time.

The first week she’s gone everyone is as desperate to find her as he is. The betrayal is plain on Morgan and J.J.’s faces, but Reid is genuinely surprised to see Hotch so affected. He wanders around with a haunted scowl as if she let him down somehow. Or he let her down; one or the other. Rossi, on the other hand, is pulling the best poker face Reid has ever encountered, and asking after Casey every day instead. 

Reid appreciates all of this on the surface, but deep inside he’s just howling in paralyzed terror. She’s gone, after everything she said. She’s left him alone with a six-month old child and a tangled head full of lifelong doubts. His intellect chirps up that _she’s_ alone as well, hunting someone who’s caused her such emotional damage that she might not have been able to make a different decision. But his bitterness finishes that thought with, _‘she loves the chase, and chasing Doyle means more to her than staying with you’._ He tries to swallow that down as well as the irrational instinct to find her and shield her from her own poor judgment. She is his family, and despite the anger and unfathomable rejection, he feels bound to protect her. And he can’t. He _can’t._ She’s disappeared as if she never existed, and the lack of evidence is a sliver in his mind driving him quietly mad.

“It takes skill to go invisible like this,” Morgan says grudgingly a week later as all their leads and tangents come up empty.

“We all knew her talents…” Hotch comments cautiously, expression impenetrable. 

“Yeah, but this?” Rossi huffs as his eyebrows rise. He sweeps a hand over the CCTV stills, border security reports, international police agency inquiries, and predictive analytics that all tell them nothing. “I’m sorta scared of her now too. That she could do this all along and we never had the slightest clue.”

Reid is so struck by the truth of Rossi’s observation that he has to excuse himself from the room and hide in the washroom for ten minutes before he can pull himself together again. _I never had the slightest clue about you, did I?_

His terror turns to disbelief, then from disbelief to anger, and finally from anger to numbness when his body can no longer sustain the anxiety levels that has been fueling it for days. It’s the numbness that causes the distraction which allows him to forget about her cell phone. At least that’s what he tells himself later. He’s stumbling into their darkened apartment one evening five days after she’s disappeared, with a stack of reports, a bag of groceries, and an armful of crying Casey who’s miserable with a cold she’s picked up from the Bureau’s daycare. He’s knocking things over and balancing the snotty, inconsolable Casey on one hip as he swats blindly around for the main light switch.

“Casey… baby bird… please… Let Daddy get organized and I promise I’ll make you feel better. We’ll get cleaned up and warm, and we’ll have a story… you’d like that, wouldn’t-”

He stops in mid-thought as Casey continues bawling. The message icon on Emily’s phone - still on the hall table where she left it - is blinking. Surely it wasn’t before, was it? 

And now he’s caught between his child and the driving need to find his love, and both feel as if they are more instinct than a choice. In the end, Casey will not be ignored. She’s been miserable since Emily left and it tears straight through the center of him that he can’t make it better. No matter how much he holds her, or fusses, Casey pushes him away and cries for her mother. Even when J.J. or Garcia or Hotch try, she’s just red-faced and angry, as if she’s being very clear and no one is paying attention to what she’s saying. He understands that frustration a little too keenly. It’s jangling his nerves to know he’s only half of what she needs, and he also finds himself overwhelmed with how much Casey reminds him of Emily. His heart stops several times a day looking at Casey’s eyes or feeling her curl against him and immediately thinking, _Emily._ He ends up placing her in the Bureau’s daycare just to get away for a while - away from his daughter’s judgment and grief, and the eyes of the woman he loves and doesn’t understand staring back at him. And he hates himself for how he’s failing everyone.

So he feeds and bathes Casey, ignoring the tickling temptation of the phone blinking on the hall table. He rocks and tells Casey stories until her heartbroken exhaustion hiccups slowly into fitful dreams. He puts her down in the turquoise room and tries not to remember everything Emily ever said about their secret world when he does it. Once Casey seems determined not to wake, Reid races to the hallway, heart hammering as he reaches for the phone and struggles to breathe. The screen lights for a split second before the battery dies.

“Mother-” he half-swears and then spends ten messy minutes trying to find a charger. Finally, the screen comes back to life and pulses 3 NEW MESSAGES.

**Unknown number: I had to**

**Unknown number: I hope you’ll forgive it someday**

**Unknown number: There will never be another. Never.**

The messages are from different days, but all dated after she ran away. And they are all quite obviously _her._ He’s choking on anger and suspicion, but also fear and heartbreak. His eyes skim over the words again, knowing they were chosen carefully for their meaning as well as their vagueness. He considers the wisdom of what he does next. His fingers flick across her keypad as he types:

**Don’t run away from me. You promised. It’s not too late to do this together. Let me in.**

He stares at the screen until his eyes hurt, and when he lifts a knuckle to rub them, his hand comes away wet.

“Damn you, Em,” he growls damply, and carries the phone with him to the bedroom where he proceeds to flop down without changing first. He wakes to Casey’s mewls over the baby monitor before dawn, body stiff from sleeping awkwardly and in his clothes. Emily’s phone is still clutched in his hand, battery dead again, and he buries his face in a pillow to stop the tears. This is all he has now: this fragile thread she’s left behind for what purpose he doesn’t know. After he gets Casey up and wrangles her into some clothes and through breakfast, he plugs the phone back into the charger, but there are no new messages. He ends up carrying it in his pocket all day at work, obsessively checking it too often. Two days pass before he breaks down and gives it to Garcia.

She blinks, eyes watery behind her pink glasses. “I don’t know what you think I can do with this,” she says gently.

“Can’t you…” Reid waves a hand around airily. “Trace the number, or mark it, or… _something?_ ”

“Only when it’s active, honey, and only when I know what and where to look for it. This could be anywhere in the world. It could be three different burner phones for all we know…”

He goes cold: she might not have received his message. Then he goes even colder: maybe she did but she’s already… He can’t finish the rest. Garcia watches him shake his morbid depression away and then sighs deeply, making him look at her again.

“How are you managing, sweety?”

“How do you think?” he says back without much heat or energy.

“I can’t believe she’d do this. Any of it.”

“I guess that makes us both suckers then.”

Garcia stares at him in complete silence until a tear streams down her cheek that she ignores entirely. Then she holds out her hand with a clack of heavy rings. “Let me keep the phone for a few days to monitor it. Maybe I can make a miracle happen…”

He doesn’t want to let it go, this final thread of _her_ , but it’s no use to him and he knows it. He places it reverently in Garcia’s palm and the gentleness of the movement isn’t lost on her.

“We’re getting her back, you know.” Garcia’s voice has steel to it now. “So she can explain her bat-crazy shit to all of us, if nothing else.”

Reid tries for a smile, he really does, but it probably comes off like a rictus given Garcia’s change in expression. He ducks his head, thanks her for her kindness, and then leaves before he can voice his own doubts that they’ll ever see Emily Prentiss again, let alone get an explanation out of her.


	45. Chapter 45

By the second week, depression sets in on all of them; a muted acceptance that their chances of catching up to either Emily or Doyle are diminishing geometrically hour-by-hour. They have nothing - less than nothing - and if this were an official case, they’d have been called off by now and reconciled themselves to waiting patiently for new evidence to surface. But the thought that ‘new evidence’ might turn out to be a body, and that this is personal, drives them all to ignore the obvious. Emily’s phone remains silent, Interpol has no new leads, and their quarry are ghosts perhaps in real life as well as in their minds.

By the third week, people stop saying hopeful things like _‘we’ll find her’_ and _‘it’s just a matter of time’_. They take on their first active BAU case since all of this began, and there is a collective sigh of relief from the others that _this_ might be a case they can solve. Reid hates them all a little bit for that, partially for the sense of betrayal it suggests, and also for the reprieve they are getting that he isn’t. Every night he goes home to a darkened apartment with his angry child and faces the overwhelming barrenness of it on his own. He doesn’t sleep, seeing Emily everywhere around him but not substantially. He lies in their bed and stares at her empty side in the dark and _aches_ for her arms around him even as he burns with hatred for wanting it so much when it was _she_ who walked away. He hates and despairs, hates and despairs in an endless cycle until his body gives up for a few fleeting hours and Casey wakes him at dawn to walk through his nightmare again. 

In the middle of week two, his sleep deprivation gets so bad that they almost veer into oncoming traffic one morning on the way to Quantico when he zones out at the wheel. It scares him so deeply that he takes a radical step and decides that if sleep won’t happen naturally, he’ll force it. He stocks up on wine and over-the-counter sleep aids thinking, one way or another, he’ll escape his head long enough to avoid somnambulism. If anyone notices that he begins showing up to work groggy or smelling faintly of booze, no one mentions it to his face. He tells himself it’s only temporary, until he can stop seeing her lying next to him and then spending half the night railing at her afterimage. He tells himself no one will care as long as he’s doing his best with Casey.

But someone notices and decides to intervene.

A month after Emily disappears, someone knocks on his apartment door on a Saturday morning, and when he answers it, he is struck mute in shock.

“May I come in, Dr. Reid?” Ambassador Prentiss says patiently when he spends thirty seconds staring at her on the stoop.

He stutters an apology and invites her in, pulse racing at the prospect of having to talk to this imposing person he barely knows.

“Sorry…”

“That’s all right,” she says smoothly, wandering through the small space with a stare that suggests she’s quietly taking stock and _judging_ it all. Reid remembers how much Emily resented that about her mother and he can understand why. “You probably haven’t had many visitors lately, have you?”

“Uh… no. No, ma’am.” He shuts the door and turns to find the Ambassador standing over Casey who’s playing on the living room floor. Casey stares back at her, cautious but unafraid, and Reid finds himself smiling. _If Casey can man up, so can I…_

Ambassador Prentiss holds her granddaughter’s stare for a long moment, and then crouches down in her expensive dress and heels. “Hello, Casey dear. Do you remember your grandma?”

Casey makes a confusing interrogative noise and then thrusts a sticky wooden truck at the Ambassador. Reid is about to step in when the Ambassador smiles and takes the truck, settling down improbably curling her legs under her as she makes herself comfortable on Reid’s threadbare area rug.

“That’s all right,” she says indulgently. “We’ll get to know each other now.”

“Ambassador, let me get you a chair…” Reid huffs. Ambassador Prentiss glances up and gives him a quiet, tired look.

“Spencer, there’s no need to fuss. I would just like to spend some time with my granddaughter if that’s acceptable to you.”

“Uh… yes, of course. It’s quite acceptable, Ambassador…”

“It’s Elizabeth, Spencer. The title is exhausting, and you are the father of my grandchild. The formality seems a little ridiculous, don’t you think?”

Casey makes an excited burst of bubbles and rams Elizabeth’s truck with a plastic elephant, giggling at the loud crack it makes. Elizabeth looks back with an animated ‘oh’ expression that isn’t remotely proper, and then smashes Casey’s elephant back much to her delight. Reid has no idea what to do, and doesn’t feel one molecule more comfortable in the situation, so he gives in and flops onto the sofa to let things unfold as they will. He’s also slightly hungover and wants to keep a safe distance from Emily’s mother in case her powers of observation are half as keen as her daughter’s.

Elizabeth plays with Casey for an hour, ignoring Reid for most of it. Casey is entranced and with good reason; Elizabeth focuses all her considerable attention on the baby and more than a few of her gestures are the exact mirror of Emily’s. For a child starving for her mother’s presence, Grandma is the next best comfort. Reid wars with how he feels as he watches from the outside: he resents that Elizabeth connects so easily, but he’s also relieved that Casey seems to brighten at this new woman in her life. The time comes when Casey gets fussy, needing a new diaper and food, but as Reid stirs to make that happen, Elizabeth looks up with an undisguised plea in her eyes.

“May I?” she asks. “It’s been years since I’ve changed a baby. I want to see if I still remember how.”

The look is so unexpectedly open and honest, like the way Emily can be when she drops all her pretenses, and he finds he can’t say no. Besides, who offers to change diapers unless they really want to? He nods and Elizabeth beams, collecting up her granddaughter and bouncing her gently as she wanders to the nursery. Casey chirps in between squirming, happy to be pampered by this new person. Elizabeth feeds her as well only handing her back to Reid for burping. Then she watches as Casey settles into Reid’s chest, eyes getting heavy and breath lengthening in contentment. She seems spellbound, and Reid thinks, _‘Casey’s done it again...’_

“May I come again?” she says quietly, eyes still locked on Casey who’s now snoring into Reid’s shirt.

“If you wish,” he says back, startled. She looks up at him and her face doesn’t have an ounce of the patrician reserve that he’s used to.

“I want to get to know her. And you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, Spencer,” she says a bit abruptly and then rises from the couch smoothing her nylons. “But I won’t come over unannounced next time. I’ll give you a chance to make yourself presentable.”

She’s not looking at him but his face flames anyway. There’s a moment of pointed silence as she collects her things, and then she does look at him.

“I can see that you’re not doing well,” she says matter-of-factly. Then she gives him a no bullshit stare. “Neither am I. Maybe we can help each other.”

He blinks up at her in shock and doesn’t know what to say to that. She hasn’t once asked about Emily or the investigation. She hasn’t seemed even remotely bothered by Emily’s disappearance.

“You’re a smart man,” she continues, seeing his disbelief. “You know grief isn’t the same for everyone.”

“Who sent you?” he whispers, face heating again when he realizes he hasn’t hidden anything from anyone.

“Aaron Hotchner,” she confirms. “But to be completely honest with you, I’ve wanted to come since I first heard that she left. I just… didn’t know if you’d want me around.”

“Why?” he asks, floored by everything he’s learning from this brief conversation.

“I have no idea what you know about me. We’re strangers to each other, bound only by the love we have for the same person. I didn’t know if that would be enough.”

“And now? Do you think it’s enough now?”

Elizabeth sighs. “What I know now is that I want to support my granddaughter, and that you are heartbroken. Anyone as openly wounded as you appear to be doesn’t have idle feelings for Emily. That’s good enough for me for now.”

Reid swallows, reassured by the soft, steady breathing of Casey against his chest. After a minute, Elizabeth simply nods and heads for the door.

“See you soon,” she says without looking back and just as suddenly as she appeared, she leaves them again, Reid unsure of whether he feels better or worse for the things she’s said and offered.

\----- 

Elizabeth becomes a fixture on weekends and one or two nights a week. When she discovers that Reid leaves Casey in daycare at work, she ruffles her feathers and demands to know why he didn’t mention it sooner.

“Casey’s too young for that. She needs consistency and comfort, especially in light of her unique situation.”

“I have to work, Elizabeth. I don’t have much of a choice,” he grumbles as he feeds Casey peas and carrots that end up more on the floor than in her.

“You wouldn’t have to work if you’d let me help…” she grumbles back. They’ve argued about this at length: Elizabeth and her money versus Reid and his pride. They know each other better now, but he’s not prepared to trust another Prentiss he doesn’t understand.

“Stop…” he sighs and drops the spoon he’s using to feed Casey. Casey signals her victory by lobbing a pea at him. He scowls at her and she giggles turning in her chair to see if Grandma saw it. And Grandma eggs her on by smiling back at her. _Great._

“Well then, let me take her while you work,” Elizabeth sighs, but smiles when Casey chirps at her and reaches out a grubby hand for hers.

“Surely you’re busy…”

“I’m retired, Spencer. How much flower arranging and party planning do you imagine I do in a day?” Elizabeth doesn’t hesitate to take her granddaughter’s dinner-smeared fingers in hers, giggling when Casey squeals with delight. “Besides, I’ve grown quite attached to her these past few weeks. She’s so much like Emily was at this age…”

Her voice gets distant and soft, and then her expression matches her voice. Reid’s chest seizes as he looks at Casey staring adoringly at her grandmother, and is overwhelmed by the thought that if Emily doesn’t come back, Casey will inherit a huge emotional responsibility that she doesn’t deserve.

“Is she?” he chokes, vision blurring a little. He feels a hand land on his knee and squeeze. He looks up and sees his devastation mirrored in Elizabeth’s buttoned-down expression.

“She was a beautiful baby,” she whispers. “So bright and happy and full of energy. I have never loved anyone more.”

He blinks through the tears in confusion. Over the past three weeks, the woman who keeps showing up to help despite their differences isn’t anything like the woman Emily described to him. There’s tenderness and insight that she should’ve mentioned and he wonders why she never did.

Elizabeth shakes her head gently, as if she knows what he’s thinking. “I’ve disagreed with many of Emily’s choices over the years, and that left us… strained. But I wouldn’t have objected so strongly if I didn’t care and wanted to fiercely protect the child I adore. She doesn’t see that, and perhaps I don’t show it well enough.”

She rises and goes to the sink to get a washcloth to clean Casey. It’s obvious to both of them that feeding time is over once the food becomes projectiles.

“After that affair with the congressman,” she stoops to wipe Casey’s fingers, smiling but keeping her voice low and neutral. “I was too hard on her. I know that now. At the time, I was disappointed that she didn’t know better, but who really knows anything at twenty…” She turns back to face him and her eyes get hard. “I wanted to feed that philanderer his own genitals and watch him choke for what he did to my baby. I almost did. But I settled for having a private conversation with him instead in which I explained that he’d never rise higher than senator in Washington society. His ego was the only thing that mattered to him, so I aimed for where I could inflict the most damage and it worked. He’s never amounted to anything and he was certainly going places before. Emily never knew.” 

“Why didn’t you tell her?” he mumbled, shocked by her subdued ferocity, so much like Emily’s. “It would’ve meant so much… it might have changed things…” Maybe she’d have made different choices about Doyle. Maybe she’d be better at trusting…

Elizabeth sighs, low and mournful. “Who knows? I’m sure there was a reason once, but I’ve forgotten what it was. And the years and silence came between us instead. But she’s still the person I love more than any other, and now she’s out there somewhere, alone, facing something dangerous that I don’t understand and can’t protect her from…” She gulps suddenly, and then turns to Casey, grabbing her carrot-y fingers and hiding her expression from Reid. “I hope you never come to understand how excruciating it feels to be left on the sidelines as your child puts herself in harm’s way and you are helpless to prevent it.”

Reid is choking behind her, finding it too hard to think around the image of Emily alone and scared somewhere in the world. Or of Casey in the same position, but small and helpless and screaming for someone she knows. He doesn’t understand how Elizabeth gets out of bed in the morning. And then he realizes that every day _he_ gets up, feeds Casey, goes to work… He is living through this just as Elizabeth is, existing on the sidelines desperate to save someone he doesn’t trust anymore. He wonders at the contradiction of this state of being, but realizes that his anger hasn’t dimmed the possessive protectiveness he’s always felt towards Emily.

“You’ve never asked about the investigation…” he stutters eventually.

“Because I don’t want to know how bad this can get, Spencer,” she hisses back, wet and broken over her shoulder at him. “My strength has limits.”

Reid nods and clears his throat once, and then again. He doesn’t want to know either, but sadly, he’s not wired to ignore the truth. But he can help Elizabeth with her pain and it won’t cost him anything to do it.

“I’d really appreciate it,” he says roughly, trying to shore himself up. “If you could take Casey during the week sometimes. It would help me out… and I need the help… and Casey likes you… and she keeps getting sick from the other kids at daycare anyway…”

Elizabeth turns to look at him, eyes watery but still holding herself together.

“I’m sure Emily would like that too.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Elizabeth murmurs.

“Well, she would if I explained _why_ ,” he clarifies. “And she isn’t here. So, it’s my call.”

He nods emphatically and Elizabeth’s mouth curls in a small smile. Behind her, Casey makes a questioning ‘whooooo’ sound.

“I can see it now,” she says softly.

“See what?”

“What Emily sees in you. When I first met you, I didn’t understand the attraction. You’re not her type at all. I thought perhaps you two were trying to make the best of it for Casey’s sake…”

“You know, for a diplomat, you can be very undiplomatic,” he grumbles, feeling his spine stiffen as it always does when he’s openly judged. He’ll never get used to it.

“You’re right. That’s one of the blind spots of privilege, isn’t it?” She smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry, Spencer, for making a quick judgment about you. Because I see that you are exactly the opposite of everyone she’s ever been with before, and there’s a reason why none of the others ever lasted.”

“What’s that?”

“Decency. You’re a good man. You think of others before yourself, you empathize, and your ego is so far down on the list of your priorities that it’s probably caused you more than a little bit of harm over the years. It’s easy to see why she’d love you.” 

He blushes, feeling a strange mix of pride and anguish at the compliment. Because how true could all of those things be if Emily loved him for them but left anyway?

“What’s less easy to understand,” Elizabeth continues, staring critically. “Is what you see in her…”

He feels his anger rise from where it’s been bubbling just below the surface of him waiting for an excuse. The anger isn’t for Elizabeth - he knows that - but there’s little satisfaction in lashing out at a ghost, and none at all in beating up himself.

“You claim to love her more than any other person, but you don’t see her _worth?_ All of the things you just called me - decent, empathetic, generous with others - she is all of those things as well. She’s defended me, healed me, backed me up when things got hard, and set me straight when I got wrong-headed. And that was all before we loved each other. She’s done that for all of us - ask anyone.” He’s growling, eyebrows lowered and completely carried away with his defense of the absent. Casey makes whimpering noises at his sharpness and he pulls back a little. “She’s brave and smart and fiercely stubborn, and she’s also soft and insecure and too hard on herself. She’s incredibly annoying, and a wonderful mom, and my best friend, and she’s never let me down until now…”

His voice peters out and his eyes flick around frantically, not sure of the point he was trying to make. A fireworks of conflict is exploding behind his ribs as he tries to justify _all of this_ to another. He hears Elizabeth sigh and then finds himself looking at her again.

“But she let you down…”

“Yes,” he chokes, burning with resentment, and the two simple words searing into his brain: _I’m sorry._

“So is that it?” Elizabeth takes step towards him and lets a hand drift to his shoulder. “If she comes back, can you forgive her?”

That’s the question he’s avoided asking himself for a month, though, increasingly, the odds of her returning are diminishing. His throat closes up and his vision blurs even as he rubs viciously at his eyes. He doesn’t bother to hide this - Elizabeth is too observant by far - all he manages is to choke down the wetness that would upset Casey if she heard it. He swallows convulsively, over and over, trying to stall the rising anxiety and nausea that are taking over. He closes his eyes, tears threatening, and his chest hiccups as he shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders, not knowing, not knowing, not knowing… Elizabeth’s hand squeezes his shoulder but he can’t look up - he’s too busy sucking it all back in and down, down, and away from sight. He feels her lean closer. When she speaks, her voice is little more than a whisper.

“Not so easy, is it? To let go…” She sounds distraught too. “It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in that feeling.”

His eyes flash to hers, tears streaking his cheeks as he glares at her. Her eyes are watery too, but she smiles at him kindly. “She’s disappointed me as well and I’ve made my own choices about that. But it’s not simple, not when love is involved, and it’s obvious that you love her very much. You’ll make your own decisions when the time is right. There won’t be a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ to them - they’ll just be whatever you can live with, and I’ll respect that, Spencer, no matter what you decide. Just let me say this: I’m glad that you loved her, and loved her so much that it makes these choices so difficult. It makes a mother happy to know her child is cherished, no matter their failings. You’re a good man and an admirable father. I’m glad to know you, Spencer Reid, though I’m sure you’re as imperfect as my daughter. As we _all_ are.”

Elizabeth leans away again, the smile still on her lips and he has the vaguest notion that he’s been complimented and insulted simultaneously. Infuriating and confusing must be a Prentiss family trait.

“I’m not sure what to say to that,” he growls, feeling hurt and defensive but honestly unsure if feeling that for himself or Emily.

“Truthfully, I don’t expect a response at all,” she says, and then turns to give Casey a huge wet kiss that makes her giggle and then a hug that makes Elizabeth proclaim, “Oh, a kid hug can make the whole world brighter… thank you, sweet thing.”

“Ahh, ah-ma,” Casey declares, waving.

Elizabeth waves back and then turns once again to Reid, but this time all business.

“I’ll come by on Monday. Is six a.m. too early?”

Reid blinks for a moment, unable to switch gears so quickly. “Uh… yeah. Yes. Six would be great.”

“Right then, it’s settled,” she huffs and heads for the door. He’s learned over the last few weeks that Elizabeth Prentiss isn’t good at goodbyes. He stumbles under the heaviness of what’s passed between them, as well as the quick return to their wary corners, and he stutters, trying to sort it all out as quickly as she has.

“Elizabeth,” he chokes and she turns with her hand on the doorknob, eyebrows raised. “I know what you’re trying to do…”

“And what am I trying to do, dear boy?”

“You want me to forgive her.”

“I want no such thing and wouldn’t presume to influence you in that direction having only the barest understanding of your relationship.” She sighs and leans a little on the open door. “I only wanted to remind you… that we are a sum of what we do. However Emily adds up to you, is something for you alone to determine.”

“You act like she’s coming back.” It slips out of him before he knows it, and this is when he realizes that he doesn’t believe this himself. His gut drops painfully.

“I’m a parent. I have no choice but to hope,” she says simply, and then walks through the doorway. “See Monday at six, Spencer.”


	46. Chapter 46

It’s Month Three, and he’s made a terrible mistake. He’s blind drunk and staring at the unwelcome guest in his living room well after midnight. Despite being inebriated to the gills and alone with Casey, he managed to find the contact info for a man whose name he wishes he could forget and arranged for this to happen. Now he’s stuck staring, hands shaking, body burning for some sort of escape. But at least he’s not thinking about _her_ anymore.

He licks his lips, and slouches forward on the sofa just as Casey makes a muffled cry from the nursery. And like that, the mesmerism is broken and he’s fucking _awake_ and fully aware of what he’s about to do. He scuttles back as far as he can into the couch and tries to stop the bile rising rapidly in his throat. The tears come next, mirroring Casey’s in the other room, and then he’s up and staggering off to the safety of that turquoise sanctuary.

“Shhhhh, Casey, easy now…” he slurs as he tries to be extra careful and purposeful in his movements. He’s really fucked up and he knows it. He doesn’t want it to get any worse. Changing her diaper, he sings her something muddled and off-key, which inexplicably calms her, and once she’s down again he’s loping to his bedroom desperate to get at his phone without making eye contact with the enemy in his living room.

“Hotch?” he gasps as if he’s been running, and it feels as if that’s exactly what he’s been doing for the past three months. “I’m in trouble.”

_“What is it? Is Casey okay?”_

“Yeah. Yeah, she is, but I’m not. Can… can you come over? I know it’s late…”

There’s a pause over the phone.

_“Have you been drinking?”_

“ ‘Fraid so. I… I’ve done something stupid, and… I’ve scared myself.” He breathes loudly and wetly. “Please, Aaron, can you come?”

_“I’m on my way to my car right now. Sit tight, Spencer. Be there in twenty.”_

The line goes dead and he just cowers in the bedroom, shaking, until he hears Hotch’s distinctive knock precisely twenty minutes later.

“Thanks,” he mutters as he answers the door, avoiding eye contact and knowing that he’s got the flop sweat of a guilty man. He feels a hand on his shoulder, warm and solid, and he looks up to see Hotch openly concerned and _not_ businesslike at all.

“What’s going on?” he whispers.

“I… I… come in, okay?”

Hotch enters, Reid shuts them in, and then he kind of herds them towards the sofa making sure Hotch is in front like a shield. Suddenly, Hotch stops and Reid knows that he’s seen it. He closes his eyes, tries to swallow down the wave of nausea and the sear of shame spreading over him.

“How much have you taken?” Hotch murmurs calmly, in crisis mode even though he’s hiding it well.

“None,” Reid swallows as his stomach heaves and his veins burn. “I give you my word. None.”

Hotch turns to face him, his scowl ferocious and untempered. The concern is gone. “How did you get it? Did you go out like this? Drunk? What about Casey?”

Reid’s stomach lurches and he tries to recover, succeeds for an instant, but then has to race to the kitchen so he can dry heave in the sink. He feels Hotch follow him, but there’s no support now – Reid has lit a match to that. He chokes a handful of times until he can marshal himself again. He splashes water on his face, missing and liberally soaking his shirt, before he can face Hotch’s judgment.

“I had it brought here,” he explains when Hotch just stands and scowls, demanding answers silently. 

“With Casey in the nursery,” Hotch adds, to highlight the disastrous choice even more.

Reid nods and feels his resolve collapse. He’s just a walking poster for shame now.

“Why?” Hotch whispers, scowl deepening in confusion. “We’ve tried to be here for you, Spencer. All of us. Why didn’t you just reach out? What possible benefit could you find in getting high in this situation?”

“I’m an addict, Aaron. There’s never a benefit to it. There’s never a goddamned reason why,” he snaps and the anger clears his head a little. They all think they’ve been there for him but he’s been on his own for months. Alone in his head, alone with his child, alone at his desk surrounded by people, untouchable, unreachable. Without her. Without the comfort of the world they created together. He wants Hotch to understand, thinks that he has a better shot at it than the others because of his experiences, but maybe everyone truly grieves in isolation. 

“An addict’s solution to intolerability is to make things more intolerable – it never makes sense. I just… wanted to forget her for a while. I wanted to stop the slow process of dying that happens inside me every second I’m awake. I wanted to stop imagining Casey living her whole life without a mother, and how I would explain that to her someday. And I wanted to get some damned rest… just one night – a whole night… She’s there every time I close my eyes, Aaron.” His voice starts coming out uneven and he _demands_ himself not to feel anything. “She’s not in my heart anymore, but she’s always on my mind.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

Reid looks up at him, anger and booze making him stupid and spoiling for a fight.

“She’s in your mind _and_ your heart. Still,” Hotch says simply with an expression that says he’d recognize the signs a mile away.

Reid growls at him – how could he not know his own heart? Hotch makes a loud sigh and as the breath goes, some of his scowling goes with it. He raises his hands slowly, as if proving to Reid that he’s unarmed.

“And I’m reaching out _now_ ,” Reid continues roughly. “I know I’ve screwed up, Aaron. I want help… I _need_ help because I can’t do this to Casey. She can’t lose both of us…”

Hotch’s hand returns to Reid, stabilizing him, and he almost leans into it. He doesn’t feel he has the fortitude to stand alone anymore.

“She’s not losing either of you. Emily will come back…”

“It’s been three months,” Reid snaps again. Denial of the obvious won’t help him here. “She’s not coming back. She’s either dead or…” He can’t make himself say _‘she doesn’t want to come home’_ out loud. Both options make him want to march past Hotch and shoot up as soon as possible. But one option is so much worse than the other; he’s shocked to discover that Emily’s death is number two on his list. He shakes his head. Does it really matter? Either way, he’s lost her…

“I can’t… hold onto the idea that she’s still out there, that there’s any hope, because when we finally get confirmation that there’s isn’t hope it’ll crush me, and then Casey really will lose me.”

Hotch’s hand squeezes his arm. “Okay,” he nods solemnly. “But we’re operating under the assumption that she’s alive until we know otherwise. I’ll hold onto that hope for you, and for Casey.”

Reid blinks, stunned at both the optimism and the gentle way Hotch offers it. He’s always seen his boss as ruthlessly pragmatic, especially in relation to Emily; they both seem to share that quality. 

“How can you… continue to believe?” Reid really wants to know. Maybe part of him envies the reaction.

Hotch looks at him as if the answer is obvious. “Because she survived nearly two years undercover with this man. She knows him, perhaps better than he knows himself.”

Reid feels his face flame as his mind tries to swerve away from the implications of that statement. And Hotch notices.

“She’s always been… complicated,” Hotch murmurs, eyes flicking away from Reid. “She’s always done things her own way, no matter the cost. I understand that principle.” Hotch pauses and Reid thinks _‘I bet he does’_. “That lack of compromise is difficult to live with, and it’s even harder to love. But you knew that going in, Spencer. That wasn’t a secret she kept from you.”

“I didn’t know nearly enough,” Reid barks back.

Hotch gives him a tired look. “Remember I said that we all lie? Emily lied to you. She left you. I’m not going to defend any of that. But do you believe you are just a passive bystander in all of this? You were angry at her long before she made the decision to leave. I saw it. You’d be naïve to think that she didn’t. Don’t you think your reactions had a role to play in this? You wouldn’t be much of a human being if hearing about Doyle didn’t make you jealous, but still… You must ask yourself: did you help to push her into this? What are _you_ lying about, Spencer?”

“Nothing,” he seethes. “How can you suggest I pushed her away?! I didn’t lie about anything!”

“That vial in your living room says otherwise. The pain that’s crippling you tells a different story.”

“You know _nothing_ about this.” Reid steps towards him vibrating with hatred that’s raw and unfocused, completely forgetting to feel ashamed of why his boss is standing in his kitchen in the first place.

“I know _everything_ about this,” Hotch counters calmly, not moving an inch. “That’s why you called me tonight. You think it’s your inability to let her go that’s killing you. You’re hoping that hate, or oblivion, will stop it. But you’ve entirely ignored your own guilt, and that’s why the drugs won’t work, or there’ll never be enough to drink… Trust me.”

“I won’t forgive her,” Reid growls. Hotch steps into his personal space and his expression hardens slightly.

“Then don’t. That’s your call. But don’t put this all on her and act like a victim. Think about your last week together, the last significant conversation you had with her. Did you freeze her out? Did you give her an ultimatum? Did you expect something unrealistic and refuse to consider other options? If you did, what would you expect her reaction to be, based on your knowledge of her? Be honest with yourself, Spencer. What does Emily do when her back’s against a wall?”

Reid’s fists curl at his sides, an involuntary reaction to being attacked, but part of his brain whispers that Hotch isn’t unobservant. Everything he’s guessed at happened, and Reid feels himself shying away from the implied responsibility. He doesn’t want to look at that because, even if this situation is intolerable, it’s easier to withstand if the fault lies squarely with Emily and no one else. A petulant part of him wants to be absolved of this, and hopes she suffers from the pain she’s caused until one of them dies. Then his mind takes a step back. _Why do I want that? I’ve never been cruel before…_

Hotch watches his face carefully, but eventually speaks when it’s clear that Reid won’t. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Just… don’t convince yourself that these events are simply black and white. You wouldn’t be trying to hurt yourself if they were.”

Reid swallows hard feeling mindless, cruel, horrified, ashamed, small, hurt, devastated – all in quick succession until the dizzying confusion threatens to make him collapse and shut down in the middle of his kitchen. He gasps for air, can’t find any, can’t think of anything, and then Hotch’s hands are back on his arms, holding him upright and together.

“Here’s what’s going to happen now,” Hotch begins in his tone of professional authority which cuts through all of Reid’s mental noise and makes him pay attention. “I’m going to call Elizabeth to come take Casey for a few days.”

Reid opens his mouth to object but nothing happens. He ends up nodding mutely instead.

“You’re staying with me and Jack for a while because being here, alone, isn’t good for you. And we’re going to talk, even if you’re not ready.” Hotch raises an eyebrow that says Reid can argue but he won’t win. Reid nods again and sighs heavily. “Do you want to go to a meeting?”

“Yes,” Reid croaks. “But not until I’m sober.”

“Agreed. And, I’m sorry about this, but I’m going to have to toss your place to see if you have anything other than what’s on your coffee table. I’m not going to take your word for it.”

Reid slouches and looks away. He’s mortified and exhausted – he’s losing his daughter, his privacy, and his dignity. He’s weak; perhaps Emily was right to leave him behind.

“Are you… going to write this up? Or…” he gulps down the panic and closes his eyes. “Report me to Child Protective Services?”

Hotch’s grip on him tightens. “This goes against my better judgment as both a boss and a cop but, no, I’m not going to make an official record of this.”

Reid opens his eyes and stares at him.

“You slipped, Spencer. I’m choosing to believe that this has scared you enough to straighten up for your daughter’s sake. I have no desire to traumatize Casey any further. If you truly want help, I’ll give it without tearing your family apart.” Hotch raises a warning finger. “But if you do this again, or something that puts Casey even remotely in danger, I won’t hesitate to put her welfare above yours. Understood?”

“U-understood,” Reid chokes out. Hotch nods and releases him.

“Okay. Now, go organize Casey’s things. I’ll call Liz and tell her to expect us soon.”

“What will you tell her?”

“Nothing. She’s an intelligent woman – she’ll read between the lines.” Reid watches as Hotch pulls out his phone and then looks back to find Reid still staring at him. He sighs. “It’ll be fine, Spencer. She likes you. She wants this to work. I won’t let her take Casey from you, and she knows how formidable I can be when provoked.”

“How well do you actually know her?”

Hotch shrugs. “If the term didn’t embarrass us both, I’d qualify us as ‘friends’.”

 _Friends?_ That was hard to picture. But then again, wasn’t _he_ friends with Elizabeth Prentiss as well? His drunken brain finds morbid humor in the fact that he never thought his life would become this complicated, nor that he’d ever collect so many unlikely people who cared for him along the way. The least he could do is find a way to be grateful for the things he _still has_ in his life…

“Thank you, Aaron,” he whispers, cheeks heating in a confusing mix of embarrassment, intoxication, and gratitude.

Hotch gives him a surprised look, as if thanks were a completely foreign concept to him. “You’d do the same for me.” He clears his throat uncomfortably. “Go get Casey. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

\---- 

He gives away Casey and submits to caretaking. It isn’t easy or comfortable for him. 

Hotch settles him in his condo, on the couch in his den that is softer than Reid feels he deserves, and tells Jack that ‘Uncle Spencer’ is visiting for a while. Jack is cautious like his father and gives Reid his space, but it doesn’t last. On the second night in the Hotchner household, Reid wakes to find Jack asleep in a nest of blankets on the floor next to the sofa. Reid shakes him awake gently, blinking in concern and confusion.

“What are you doing here, Jack?” he whispers to the sleepy boy wiping his eyes.

“Keepin’ you company,” Jack yawns, all cowlicks and airplane pajamas. 

Reid can’t help but smile, and when he does it hurts him a little because he’s done it so infrequently over the past three months. “That’s sweet, but you should sleep in your own bed. The floor isn’t comfortable. What would your Dad say?”

“Dad says you’re sad. Is it because you miss Casey?”

Reid’s heart constricts behind his ribs. He nods. “I miss her terribly,” he whispers. He misses her happiness.

Jack thinks for a moment in the shadows of the room. “When Dad goes away, sometimes I miss him so much that I get sad too. When he comes back again, he lets me sleep in his room with him, and I don’t feel sad anymore. I feel safe ‘cause I know where he is. I think it makes him feel safe too.” Jack looks up at him. “Do you feel safe?”

Reid is taken aback. Safe isn’t a concept he’s applied to himself in a while, and the truth is that he hasn’t felt safe since the day Emily called him and told him to wear his gun. He shrugs at Jack, not willing to explain his personal upheaval to a six-year-old.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. “This isn’t your room, and Casey isn’t around. I bet you wake up scared sometimes.”

Boy, was that an understatement.

“So, I thought I’d sleep here so that if you woke up scared, you wouldn’t be alone,” Jack concludes, and Reid’s body slouches at the sentiment. “Just ‘til you and Casey can go home again.”

“Oh, Jack,” he mumbles, trying to cover the unevenness he feels. “That’s very kind of you.”

“S’okay. I know nighttime is scarier than daytime.” He snuggles back down into his blankets in a way that suggests he won’t be moved. Reid reaches out and pats the head of his six-year-old guardian.

“It is. Thank you for thinking of that.” And he is thankful, this _is_ scary.

“Yer welcome,” Jack huffs and soon is sound asleep again while Reid remains awake formulating a new plan for himself.

When he rises the next morning and wanders into the kitchen, Jack is sitting at the counter devouring a bowl of Cheerios as Hotch pushes a mug of coffee towards Reid.

“He slept in the den with you?” he asks quietly over his own mug.

Reid nods. “Said he was there because nights can be scary in a strange place.”

Hotch smiles and glances at his son with pride. “He enjoys sleepovers.”

“He’s a good boy.”

Hotch nods and then turns back to Reid. “So. Have you come up with a plan yet?” Reid blinks in surprise and Hotch rolls his eyes gently. “It’s been three days. If you aren’t already imagining how to get Casey back and your life on track, I’m really going to start worrying about you.”

“Well, first I’m going to a meeting, and then I’m going to see Casey.” He huffs. “Then I’m going to the hardware store.”

Hotch’s eyebrows wrinkle in confusion. Reid doesn’t elaborate. “Have you been through the apartment yet?”

“Yes. Rossi and I cleared it out yesterday,” Hotch mumbles, curious. “We threw out the booze and sleeping pills as well, by the way.”

Reid nods, waves it away. “Fine. I won’t need them anyway. It’s time I faced up to what scares me. No more running away.”

He feels Hotch’s broad hand land on his shoulder and squeeze. “And what is it that scares you?” he asks quietly.

Reid sighs. “Losing her. Being angry for the rest of my life. Being a single parent. Realizing the happiness I wanted my whole life wasn’t meant to last.” Hotch’s grip gets tighter and it draws Reid’s gaze upwards. “But the truth is I’ve already lost her. I’m already a single parent. My happiness has been gone for a while now. Being angry about any of it won’t change anything.”

“Your happiness isn’t gone, Spencer. You have Casey.”

“And that’s exactly the point,” Reid taps the counter definitively. “I have to move forward and Casey will be my focus. I can’t indulge in this quagmire of self-pity anymore. My little bird needs me, and I need her. We’ll make it through this – together. It’s the only option, really.”

Hotch nods and smiles but it’s tinged with a mournful understanding that makes Reid pause. Then he feels his face burn. “I’m sorry, Aaron. This must bring back… memories for you. And I’ve been selfish about my suffering. It isn’t anything like what you’ve faced…”

Hotch sighs as his hand slips away from Reid’s shoulder. “Nobody’s pain is alike. There’s no objective scale for ranking loss. I just… I want to help. That’s all.”

“And you have. You and Jack. Even Elizabeth. You’ve all dragged me back to my senses. It’s a first step, and I know there are more to come. But… thank you. For everything.”

Hotch blinks at him, once again stunned by gratitude. Reid just smiles and slurps his coffee, determined to _keep_ thanking Hotch, through words and actions, until he elicits another response from him.

\----- 

When Reid arrives at Elizabeth’s place, Casey wiggles in her grandmother’s arms upon seeing him and squeals a loud, “Da!” His mouth falls open as he swoops in to hold her, looking up in shock at a benevolent Elizabeth.

“Was that…” he gasps as Casey chirps excitedly against him.

Elizabeth chuckles. “I think so. She’s been saying it several times a day since you brought her here. It’s always a question. Like, _‘where is he?’_ ”

“Oh, little bird…” he mumbles wetly, burrowing into her as she giggles and his heart fills until it could burst. “I’m right here. Daddy’s right here and I’m not going anywhere. I promise.” 

And a promise is a promise. He buys a camp bed and installs it in the turquoise room. Then he faces down the apartment, alone, announcing his plan to the walls and floors and furniture.

“This is _our home_ : mine and Casey’s. You will not chase me from it. We will make new memories here. We will grow and change. We will _live_. I won’t banish you from this place – this was once yours as well. I won’t pack you away and try to push you from my mind. If you come back, your things will be here for you. I won’t throw them away as useless or unwanted. You can decide what you want to do with them for yourself. But I will _not_ be haunted anymore. I have to move on. I’m not waiting for answers that might never come. I don’t want to be angry anymore – I don’t want to waste time blaming you. I need that energy for Casey. I want her to be happy and that means I have to try to be happy as well.” 

He sighs heavily. “I miss you. I don’t want to, but I do. I want you to be okay wherever you are, though that’s no longer something I can give you. I know I’ll still think about you, but… I’m moving on. Goodbye, Emily.”

His throat is tight, his cheeks are wet, and his pulse is pounding in his ears, but a small piece of him lets go and he feels… relieved. 

He goes to more meetings and he spends time with others. A week later he brings Casey home again and that night they both sleep in the turquoise room together staring at the swirling stars on the ceiling. His logic is that if he’s close to her, he has a vivid reminder of why he needs to keep his promise. But when he wakes the next morning and feels refreshed, having slept through the night for the first time in months, he understands that what he’s really done is reclaim their safety. In the night, when things are their darkest, they are not alone. They have each other.


	47. Chapter 47

She loses a fight down by the water where no one bothers to go except the dock workers. She should’ve known: these are Ian’s people, even if _these_ particular dock workers are a different color, wearing different clothes, and speaking a strange language neither she nor he understands. And they fundamentally don’t care about two white people beating the shit out of each other.

She’s in a tight spot. She’s been shot, her collar bone’s broken as well as a few ribs, he snapped two fingers on her right hand when they fumbled for the gun, and he’s smashed her head so many times into the pier that she’s certain she’s got a serious concussion. Now he’s standing over her – bruised, bloody, and broken himself – but with the upper hand, and a huge piece of dock piling that he’s planning to beat her to death with. 

There’s a moment where everything slows down a little. A sanguine part of her thinks it’s a bit clichéd, but weird stuff happens when you’re about to die. In this slow time, she reruns things in her mind she’d wish she’d done differently. Been kinder to her mother, worked less, loved more, worried less about keeping up appearances, dived into risks more often – well, more enjoyable risks, at any rate. Her biggest regret is leaving Casey too soon; there’s no chance that she’ll remember Emily as she grows up. She’ll listen to Spencer’s stories of her, and that’s all her mother will ever be to her: a story that makes her father sad. It’s just a moment – there and gone in an instant – and then Doyle winds up to bash her skull in with a 4x8. 

“You still with me, luv?” he mushes through broken teeth. Emily’s proud of that. “No fading away now to someplace softer. Yer gonna die hard the whole way.”

“You know,” she groans. “There’s something really wrong with you. And not just the garden variety moral ambiguity-kinda wrong either. You’re really broken in a basic way. It’s sorta sad.”

She’s playing for time, to come up with _something_ that will get her out of this, but she’s not confident it’s doing anything more than postponing the inevitable by a few minutes. Still, Doyle’s arms sag and the lumber becomes less menacing.

“What are you on about now, Lauren? You’re the one who’s about to die. I’d say I’m doin’ just fine.”

“My name isn’t Lauren, you shit,” she sighs, and her ribs complain bitterly. “What I mean is, you escape some godforsaken hellhole – somewhere that was supposed to end you – and you don’t make the most of it trying to get back into your rackets or with your people, or even trying to get your son back. You waste your damned time chasing after revenge, putting yourself on every police agency’s radar in the free world again, and for what? To kill one woman who lied to you when she said she loved you. Can’t you see how fucking _defective_ that choice is?”

Doyle laughs and it splatters his lips with blood when it happens.

“Like I’m taking psychological health tips from a woman who did what you did _for a fucking job,_ Lauren. No one ordered you to sleep with me – you made that choice on yer own, luv. I wonder, was it your congressman who fucked yer head so badly that bedding me was no big deal?”

Doyle pauses and smiles when he sees the surprise seep out of her.

“Yeah, I know about him. I know about the baby you killed when you were fifteen too. I’m not much of a Catholic, but yer goin’ to hell for that one, sweetheart. So, don’t preach to me about being wrong – you were damaged from the start and more impressively than me. Don’t think that shacking up with that _boy_ back in America and spawning a child has suddenly healed you, Lauren. And don’t fool yourself into thinkin’ this convivial chat of ours right now means yer gonna make it outta here and back to them.” 

What she says next is pure Lauren Reynolds, because Emily Prentiss wouldn’t have the balls to abuse the memory of _him_ she’s been holding onto for months. “Awww, what’s the matter, Ian? Jealous?”

“Of that slip of a man?” Doyle sneers. “There’s no accounting for taste, luv, but he seems well beneath your established standards. Bet he can’t fight his way out of a wet sack, let alone do for you what I did. I won’t take it personally that you’ve settled for a thin, limp cock.” He leans in closer as his bloody grin gets wider. Emily remembers Reid’s desperate growl, _I can take care of you_ , and feels a stab of grief. He could have if she’d let him. Unlike Doyle, she doesn’t doubt Spencer Reid at all. It’s another sharp regret she adds to her list.

“Even if you manage to survive this, you think that whelp will forgive what you’ve done?” Doyle continues, grinning like the smug villain he is. “You think he’d ever want you again knowing that you’d whore down without battin’ an eyelash first? Maybe he’s openminded but, in my experience, men don’t extend much generosity around sharing cunt.”

It’s not the jealousy she’s worried about: it’s the betrayal. But Emily doesn’t want Spencer to be a part of these final moments. Her breath catches in her battered chest and she squeezes the image of him – wide-eyed and wrecked – out of her mind with effort. Doyle’s just savoring his triumph, trying to goad a reaction from her to add a little extra spice to things. He doesn’t know a damned thing about her, not really. And he’s just another in a long line of people who misunderstand Reid.

“C’mon, Ian,” she grins back at him, making his smile dim as he gets confused. “This is _all_ about your masculine pride, otherwise, why bother with me? The moment you kill me, you lose the direct access to your son. Are you more concerned about me betraying your dick than you are about finding your child? Talk about the lowest, most basic option available to you…”

“Fuck you,” he whispers, face changing monstrously and obviously shaking. Emily wants to bait him, draw him in so she can even the odds, but she becomes afraid that she’s gone too far. Her body fires with a weak shot of adrenaline and she scrabbles her broken self up on her elbows and tries to crawl backward along the dock to put distance between them. “Where do you think you’re going? Should I shoot you in the other leg for good measure?”

She keeps crawling back, even though they lost the gun long ago. She runs into a coil of heavy mooring ropes abandoned on the wharf front. It smells of algae and rot and the heaviness of the air in this place around them. She suddenly hopes that this won’t be the last thing she smells. She wants books and rain and wool once more, aftershave and baby powder and the fabric softener they use for Casey’s clothes…

“Tell me where my son is,” Doyle growls as he stalks closer. “Tell me and I’ll put you down quick. A final courtesy from one parent to another.”

“He’s better off without you, Ian. He has a good life – let him live it. That should be enough.” Her hands stretch across the pier beneath her as she wonders if she has enough energy left to launch herself at him and catch him by surprise. Something scrapes her fingers and she looks down to see a piling fragment, sharp and no longer than a pencil. A glorified splinter, really…

Doyle’s expression creases into hatred again. “Have it your way, luv. You can die here and I’ll find Declan on me own.” He quickly flashes down onto one knee before her, raising his 4x8 over his shoulder to strike. “I’ll make sure yer friends back home find out about you. I’ll let them mourn ya, watch over ‘em as they grieve for the lie you convinced them you were. Then, when they seem to be comin’ out of it, when the clouds lift on their lives and offer them hope again… I’ll go pay my respects to yer nerd and kitten.” Doyle’s hate produces the worst smile she’s ever witnessed as he leans in just a fraction closer. “I’ll make him watch as I pull that sweet, little girl apart. I’ll paint him in her blood before I kill him. And before he loses his mind over it, I’ll tell him that you send your regards, Lauren. He might find that comforting…”

Emily’s fingers wrap around the wood fragment without thinking, her other arm flashing forward as her chest and collar bone complain to grasp Doyle’s neck and pull him down as if to embrace him. She screams, half from the pain of everything that’s broken and half from the image of Reid thrashing helplessly watching his daughter die, and as Doyle trips forward from Emily’s unexpected grip she funnels the last of her strength into plunging that glorified splinter into Doyle’s ear canal. The rough wood tears into her hand, slivers making it come alive in new pain. Her fingers release automatically, but the effect is instantaneous. Doyle’s face freezes in surprise as his eyes go dull and blood drips from his ear. Then he sags forward, all dead weight, and collapses her into the pier with a thud.

She huffs, breath whooshing out of her chest as he lands on top of her and her ribs jackknife in agony. She can’t think past the pain, can’t breathe, can’t find the strength to roll away from him. Then the tears follow, because she’s won – against all odds – but she’s still dying. She’ll die in this humid hellhole crushed under the body of a meaningless psychopath and her family might never know where she ended up. They’ll never get closure, and she’ll never get to make amends for the clusterfuck Lauren made of their lives.

She thinks of Casey as she struggles for breath and as her head pounds with the cloudy promise of impending unconsciousness that spells the end. She sees her bright expression, the grin she’s inherited from her father, the boundless energy that keeps her constantly in motion, frustrated by her lack of coordination. Emily hopes that she grows up well, that Reid teaches her everything, and she ends up nothing like her mother. She looks up into the blurring sky, watching the shadows of birds far beyond her focus wheeling without a care.

“Take care of her, Spence,” she gasps, Doyle’s body becoming heavier by the second. “Do a better job of it than I did of you two. I should’ve let you help… needed your help. I needed _you…_ ”

Then he’s there, face fuzzy above hers looking down with concern. Her heart leaps but then her head pounds and forces her eyes shut against the light.

“Spence… babe…”

The weight on her chest is suddenly gone and the surge of pain made by her ribs is so intense that she whimpers. But it’s better than being smothered. She opens her eyes again and sees him smile at her through her tears. She can’t believe he’s here, that he found her, that he chased her halfway across the world, six months later, after everything she did to him.

“Baby, I’m sorry… so, so sorry…”

He looks confused and when he opens his mouth to speak, his words make no sense. She doesn’t know if it’s her head that’s causing the confusion or something else, but he keeps talking and it refuses to become any clearer. He starts yanking her upward and she howls in pain. His hands hold her steady, easing her back to the dock, and when she can open her eyes again, the pain has cleared her vision enough to see that his face is brown, his clothes are robes, he’s ten years too young, and he’s a complete stranger. He speaks again but she can’t make it out. She just mouths ‘Help’ and ‘American’, and hopes their universality will be enough. It must be – the stranger nods and thins his lips in determination as he heaves her up again despite her screams. She loses sense of time after that, only aware of the fact that every limping step forward on the arm of a foreign boy is a step further away from Ian fucking Doyle.


	48. Chapter 48

September in Las Vegas can be brutal. The desert nights are cold enough to make you think of winter, but the days are still too hot to be comfortable. Casey, a distinctly northern girl, doesn’t appreciate the subtlety of her father’s hometown. She fusses in the bright sunlight, the sear, sagebrush-scented air, and the oppressive heat as they travel from building to car to building again.

“Hot,” she declares loudly as Reid scoops her from the child seat and lifts her so they can hustle to Bennington from the parking lot as quickly as possible. “Da, _hot._ ”

“I know, baby, but it’s just for a minute. Then we can see Gram. It’s worth it for Gram, isn’t it?” He groans as he shoulders her and grabs his satchel from the backseat. His knee complains as well. “You’re getting so big, Casey-bird. Soon you’ll be carrying your old Dad…”

Casey giggles and flings her arms out as Reid shuffles to Bennington’s lobby. She’s taken the bird thing to heart and thinks that she might be able to fly someday. Reid refuses to disabuse her of this notion. He holds her close and makes them swoop and dive together towards the doors as if Casey’s flying skills need practice. She hoots with glee and makes some of the residents out front twitch from the sudden noise. Reid feels guilty for a split second, but the giggling is just too wonderful. He decides that if a child’s laughter disturbs another so much, there might not be much in this world that could soothe them in the first place.

“Okay, Case, remember we have to be quiet for Gram. Like the library. Be a teeny, tiny bird for me…”

Casey scrunches down into his chest and starts peeping like a chicken. He smiles as he nods to the attendants at the reception desk and heads for Diana’s suite. He’ll take what obedience he can get from his daughter but is under no illusions that it’ll last the length of their visit.

Diana is sitting in her room, staring out the window in a way that usually signals she’s not entirely present. Reid’s stomach tightens and he wonders how he’ll handle that for Casey. They’ve been visiting every day for almost a week and Diana Reid has been lucid and doting for most of it. It honestly shocks him and he’s been happy not to question it. She hears them and turns, but her expression melts into recognition immediately as she grins and holds out her arms. Reid lets his breath ease out slowly.

“Gam!” Casey exclaims and wiggles dangerously. Reid huffs – so much for being quiet.

“Casey, library voice, remember?”

“She’s fine, Spencer,” Diana rises and comes to them, cuddling her granddaughter close and twirling them around. “This place could stand to be livelier.”

“I’m pretty sure the Director wouldn’t agree with you, Mom,” he smiles as he watches them dance.

“Nonsense. Perhaps part of the problem with this place is the funerial atmosphere.” Diana nuzzles into Casey’s neck and leaves a loud row of kisses that makes her squeal. “We need children, and puppies, and purple dinosaurs, and… excitable little chickadees…”

Casey squeals again and begins an eager conversation of half English, half chirping. Reid shakes his head and closes the door to keep the volume manageable. 

“You’re incorrigible, Mom.”

“I’m a Grandma. That’s my job,” she winks back. Casey begins chanting ‘Gam, Gam, Gam’ in a lilting song of her own invention. “So, how can I spoil my two favorite people today?”

“She’s been spoiled plenty on this trip, Mom. All those presents you gave her for her birthday… I’ll have to buy an extra suitcase to bring them home.”

“You only turn one _once_ , Spencer,” Diana chastises.

“You only turn any age once,” he counters and she rolls her eyes at him. Then her disease kicks in and sucker punches him like it always does.

“Where’s Emily?” she asks distractedly. “Is she parking the car?”

Reid’s stomach flips. Just once. He’s gotten much better at that in the last three months. “No, Mom. She’s gone, remember? She disappeared six months ago. I told you that,” he explains quietly.

Diana looks up at him with sudden, shocked heartbreak. “Oh, Spencer…” she chokes. “My baby… that’s terrible. You love her so much.”

“Loved her, Mom. Loved her,” he corrects, but it won’t make a difference to Diana. Perhaps it doesn’t even really make a difference to him, despite his best efforts.

“Six months…” Diana shakes her head, and Casey mimics her. “How could I have forgotten?”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Reid soothes gently, ignoring the way his chest is getting tight.

“It’s not okay, Spencer.” Diana holds his eyes for a moment and the devastation there remains. He’s surprised because a majority of what Diana knows about Emily has been through his letters, not her actual presence. “What about Casey? A girl needs a mother…”

Reid sighs heavily and Casey looks at him recognizing her name but not understanding how the mood in the room has shifted.

“I’m not sure how much she remembers at this point.”

Casey’s life is so full of things to do, new experiences and new people. In the past three months she’s become the beloved foster child of everyone on Reid’s team. When she’s not spending her days with Elizabeth, she’s over at J.J. and Will’s playing with Henry, or being pampered by Garcia and Morgan, or watching videos with Jack at Hotch’s place, chirping along as Jack narrates the action. Even Rossi has ‘squirt-proofed’ his writing study so that he can have some quality Casey time whenever her busy social schedule permits it. And, though it cuts him open to do it, Reid tries to remind Casey of Emily. There’s a small picture in a silver frame in the nursery that Reid points to and says “Say hi to Mommy. She’s watching over you…”. But more often than not, Casey’s eyes flick away from the image trapped under glass, wanting a toy instead, or real arms to hold her. She has no patience for things that aren’t present.

“She doesn’t look for her anymore, Mom,” Reid murmurs, trying to keep his voice even, but he’s not fooling his mother. “When she cries, it’s not Emily she’s crying for. Maybe the memories of her are just gone. How much do we really remember from our first year anyway?”

Diana tuts and walks over to him making them sandwich Casey in a hug between them. Casey reaches for her father’s face and pinches the side of his mouth trying to force it up into a smile.

“Don’t underestimate what a child knows,” Diana looks at him, eyes clear and serious in a way that surprises him. Part of the tension in his gut uncoils under that stare; an illogical reaction that speaks to his desire to _believe_ rather than to understand. “When Emily returns, Casey will know. It’ll be instinct. The bond between a parent and their child is part magic, Spencer.”

Reid loves magic and his mother knows this. He understands that she’s trying to ease his hurt, nothing more. He’s grateful for her efforts, but it doesn’t help Casey at all. “Emily’s not coming back, Mom,” he whispers as he nuzzles Casey’s pinching fingers until she grabs his nose with a squeak.

“We’ll see,” Diana says as if she knows something he doesn’t, and then lets the subject drop in favor of peek-a-boo and zooming her granddaughter around her suite like an airplane.

They share a few precious, beautiful hours together with only one significant child tantrum to negotiate. It’s almost paradise, or Reid’s version of paradise, at any rate. Diana watches her son quietly as they both stare out her window at the manicured gardens beyond it that should be impossible in the middle of the desert. Casey naps against Reid’s chest, fingers curled in his shirt and drooling peacefully. He doesn’t know how long they sit like that in contented silence until Diana breaks the calm.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers, smiling widely.

He blinks at her in confusion, but can’t help returning the smile. “Why?”

“Because you never stop fighting for what you want. You wanted friends, a family, meaningful purpose beyond pure intellectual pursuits. I wasn’t always sure that you’d have those things, Spencer. For all my hopes, I thought… maybe I wasn’t strong enough to teach you how to get them.”

“Mom… no…”

“But look at you,” Diana’s voice fills with quiet awe that makes his heart skip. “You help people. You are impassioned. You have the most wonderful child who is teaching you so much about yourself. And you found that beautiful friend you spent your life looking for, and made her yours. I couldn’t be prouder of you, son. Truly. You have become so much more than I’d hoped.” 

He swallows past the lump in his throat and tries to bask in his mother’s praise, ignoring the complications that tag along with it. “Thanks, Mom. Sometimes I can’t believe this is my life…”

Diana chuckles softly and squeezes his arm. “Oh good. It’s not just me who has those moments. That’s comforting.”

He laughs back, trying to avoid waking Casey, but she wiggles and snuffles into him again anyway. Their laughter slowly fades and then Reid feels Diana squeeze his arm again. When he looks over at her, she’s staring out at the gardens, a small smile curling the corners of her mouth.

“This disease has taught me something over the years: the only thing you can expect is the unexpected,” she murmurs. “If you hold onto reality too tightly, you’re in for a bumpy ride.” She rolls her head to look at him again, eyes soft, tranquil. “You must be like water, Spencer. Flow where nature and instinct take you, even if it doesn’t make sense. Be adaptable, be liquid. It’s the only way to get through this without losing your mind.”

He watches her, looking for signs that she might be slipping away to a less rational place, but all he sees is calm. He nods, and she hums contentedly as she looks out over the gardens again. Her hand skims down his arm until her fingers curl around his.

“This has been a wonderful visit.”

He smiles at that, deciding to be adaptable rather than worried. “It has,” he sighs happily.

\---- 

When Diana starts a philosophical discussion with Plato, Reid determines that their visit has come to a natural conclusion. He makes his farewells, and Diana is stable enough to kiss and hug Casey goodbye before launching back into her argument over freewill with a phantom in the corner of her suite. As Reid buckles Casey into her car seat, he thinks that he’s fortunate to have had this time with his mother. She’s been an unexpected comfort to him, and he’s been proud to finally share Casey with her. Even so, he feels like he needs a vacation from his vacation, or at least a gigantic nap to recharge his batteries a little.

He should’ve guessed that his luck wouldn’t extend that far.

His phone rings as he’s chasing Casey across the floor of his hotel room, trying to prevent her from bonking her head on every sharp corner she can find.

“Hello?” he huffs without looking at the caller i.d.

_“Reid? It’s Hotch.”_

“Oh hey. How’s it going?”

_“Are you with Diana? Do you have a moment to talk?”_

Hotch’s quiet seriousness makes him sit up and pay attention. “I’m at the hotel with Casey. What’s up?”

_“I know you’re scheduled to fly back tomorrow, but you should try and change your flight to tonight. If you can’t manage that, I’ll send the jet for you.”_

“Send the jet?” Reid’s stomach twists painfully. He doesn’t travel with the team anymore – it’s part of a deal he struck with Hotch so he could spend most of his time with Casey. “Why? Is there an emergency case?”

 _“Reid,”_ Hotch sighs deeply over the phone. _“Emily’s been found.”_

He can’t breathe; it’s the way Hotch says it. “Is she… dead?” 

_Please. No._

_“She’s alive,”_ Hotch affirms quickly. _“Some local kid found her near Tunis and dragged her to the American Embassy there. She must have been conscious enough to drop the right names because someone reached out to Elizabeth, and she contacted the State Department, and then Emily was on the next flight to Ramstein Air Base. She’s being stabilized there before being sent on to Washington.”_

“Stabilized? Why?” Casey starts chirping loudly and Reid turns to her hissing for her to be quiet for a moment. Her little face falls and then the tears come, and Reid’s gut twists even more as he moves to soothe her and tells himself he has to calm the hell down.

 _“Reid,”_ Hotch says cautiously. _“Your priority is Casey. Don’t worry about the flight. I’m sending the jet to McCarran. Screw the flak from the higher ups. Just get there and I’ll text you the details, okay?”_

“Hotch, tell me why she’s being stabilized.” He tries to make the demand commanding while also wrestling a crying child to his chest.

_“I honestly don’t know. This is all the information I was given. Elizabeth tells me that her contact in Tunisia said Emily was in a bad state. I can only speculate that it was a very bad state if they flew her to Germany to stabilize her further.”_

Reid closes his eyes and grinds his teeth to keep the panic from crawling up his throat. He can’t do anything about this. He can’t do anything but wait and see her with his own eyes. Then his mind darts in another direction entirely.

“What about Doyle?” he growls. Casey is hiccupping into his chest.

There’s a pause over the phone and Reid can hear Hotch breathing. _“The local who found her said she was next to a dead man. I had Garcia skim Tunis police reports for John Does and get morgue records or photos where possible. There’s one of interest, and I’ve requested the Tunis M.E. run a DNA check on him based on the profile we’ve provided. It’ll take some time to get confirmation, but I’m looking at a photo of him right now, and I’m reasonably confident it’s Doyle.”_

Reid lets out a rough, wet breath that nearly collapses him on top of his daughter. Then he gets lightheaded as everything fades into the background except _he’s dead._

“Oh my god,” he wheezes. “She got him…”

_He’ll never come after Casey. She’s safe… My daughter is safe at last._

_“I know,”_ Hotch says quietly, with strange pride in his voice. _“Get to the airport, Reid. You are needed back home.”_

“I will,” he chokes and quickly hangs up. Then he scoops Casey, tears still streaking down her cheeks, and wipes her clean with a thumb. 

“I’m sorry, baby bird. Daddy didn’t mean to snap at you. Would you like a kiss? Would that make things a little better?”

Casey ducks her face and he takes that as permission to sneak in and give her a peck on each cheek. “I love you so much, sweetheart. To the moon and back. I’ll never, ever, ever stop loving you, even if I snap sometimes. Okay?”

Casey’s gaze is bashful and then she butts her head into his chest under his chin. She lets out a soft “Da” that makes him curl her closer.

“Now, we have to fly, Casey-bird,” he murmurs as he lurches them both up from the floor with effort. “Uncle Aaron is sending a plane so we can fly away home.”

Casey starts chirping softly, but still clutching him close. He won’t put her down. He packs them up with one hand, the other wrapped around the child against his heart. It takes longer, but that’s fine.

As they leave the hotel room, Casey says, “Fly?”

“Yes, baby. We have to hurry.” He gulps. “Someone is waiting for us.”


	49. Chapter 49

She’s back stateside for twelve hours before the staff at G.W.U. allow any visitors. Neither Hotch or Elizabeth’s influence will budge the medical staff on that. Reid becomes a slowly-tightening tangle of anxiety in the meantime. He works out conversations in his head, but each one ends up in a different direction. He makes decisions – confident and unchangeable one minute – and then tears them apart a minute later. He waivers dangerously between demanding to see Emily immediately, and taking Casey home to hide away from the reality he doesn’t want to negotiate. 

When the doctors finally allow access to her, Reid glances over at Elizabeth and then nods towards the Intensive Care doors.

“You go,” he murmurs unevenly. But Elizabeth turns to him, fear etched in every inch of her, and that scares him in a completely unexpected way. She walks over and collects Casey from his arms as she whispers, “No. I’m not ready. Please, Spencer… you go first.”

And then he doesn’t really have a choice. Under the eyes of his daughter and his friends, he can’t back away from this responsibility. He stands, rubs his palms on his pants, and then walks towards the waiting IC nurse.

“Dr. Reid?” The doctor in the hall outside her room checks his clipboard. “You’re her domestic partner, correct?”

“No. Uh… yes. I mean, she’s been missing for six months, so…” _I have no idea what I am._

The doctor looks at him and eventually nods, as if the answer is good enough. 

“Dr. Reid, I want to prepare you for what you’re going to see.” The doctor presses the chart next to his chest and sighs. “She was shot in the leg but that’s the least of her injuries. A through-and-through. She has a broken clavicle, two broken ribs and three cracked ones. Several bones in her right hand are broken and she’s sprained her left wrist. Her liver is lacerated. Her kidneys are bruised and inflamed. She has so much heavy bruising across her torso and face that it’s hard to distinguish the points of contact. The concussion is what worries me the most. She hasn’t been very lucid since she arrived and the swelling isn’t receding as quickly as I would like. There could be memory loss or decreased cognitive function for a time. It’s hard to tell until we can get her to be more coherent. She’s also malnourished and underweight. This, along with her sky-high cortisol levels are straining her cardiac output. I’m hoping this will improve once she sees family and friends. We need her to be calm.”

Reid nods dumbly, overwhelmed by the diagnosis dumped on him.

“The doctors in Germany were blasé about her injuries,” the doctor continues, shaking his head and frowning. “But I’ve never seen a beating this severe in twenty years of civilian practice. It says in the report from Ramstein that she _walked_ into an embassy in North Africa like this?”

“Uh, y-yes. That’s my understanding.”

The doctor’s eyebrows rise. “Frankly, I don’t know how that’s possible. She must have a will of steel. It’s impressive.”

Reid looks away towards the door that separates him from her. It’s just frosted glass and molded plastic, nothing more.

“My point is, Dr. Reid, that she’s been through a lot, and her recovery will take time. It would be a great help if you could remain calm and encourage her to do the same. She keeps asking for you, and for someone named…” He flips a page on the clipboard. “Casey.”

“That’s our daughter,” Reid whispers. The doctor nods and makes a note.

“Well, it seems to be causing her great anxiety, so the sooner we can convince her that you’re both here, the better for her. She’s on some medication for her considerable pain, so that is compounding the lucidity issue. If she wakes, she may not make sense, or she may hallucinate. It’s temporary. Just reassure her with your presence. I think that’s the best medicine for her at the moment.” The doctor pauses for a minute, sizing him up. “Do you have any questions for me, Dr. Reid?”

“Uh…” Reid shakes his head. “When… when will she be released?”

“Well,” the doctor huffs. “That’s up to the concussion really. I’d say the earliest we could release her would be a week, maybe ten days from now. But she’ll need care once she’s at home. She’s got a lot of broken bones, and we don’t know the effects of the head trauma yet.”

“Okay,” Reid gulps, starting to shake from the anxiety of what lies beyond that door. “Can I go in now? I just want to go in…”

“Yes, of course. Reach out to me or one of the nursing staff if you have any questions, okay?”

Reid doesn’t answer, just turns and pushes through the door leaving the doctor behind with a soft swish of air. It’s a dual occupancy room but the opposite bed is empty. The curtain has been pulled around her bed so that only her blanket-covered feet are visible. He walks forward, sneakers squeaking lightly on the linoleum, and clutches the edge of the curtain. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and pulls it back with a hiss.

He thought he was prepared, but the mottled blue-black, purple bruising littering her face and arms actually make him gasp. Her face is so swollen that she looks alien – only half herself. One eye is so bloated that she probably can’t open it. And the doctor’s right: she’s terribly thin, skin slightly grey under the fluorescent light. It’s hard to tell under the swelling, but her cheeks look concave, like some feral creature on the hunt for her next meal. Looking at her like this, she’s not Emily to him at all, and he has no idea how she walked _anywhere_ after such a beating. He grasps the bedside rail to steady himself, and a strange whimper escapes him before he notices, almost lost in the beeps of the machines monitoring her.

It must have been loud enough, or maybe she senses someone in the room with her. Her chest expands and then she lets out her own whimper, probably from the cracked ribs. Her head twitches, her one good eye flutters, and then she’s coughing and trying to pull the air tube from her face with a mangled hand that makes her hiss and jerk.

“Hey, hey…” he moves without thinking, gently pulling her hand away. “No, leave it in.”

She hisses again in pain and then her eye flicks open as he lays her hand out on top of the sheets. When he looks at her, that one good eye is riveted to him, clear and focused. He twitches under the scrutiny and waits.

“S’ence…” she rasps through a bruised mouth. He’s frozen, not sure what to do or say. Eventually, he musters enough will to nod at her. Her eye closes and a silent tear squeezes out quickly and is lost to the pillow beneath her. “You… really… here?”

“Yes,” he chokes out.

She labors to swallow and then he looks around for water.

“Thirsty?”

She grunts and he fumbles around for a cup on a tray with a long straw. He leans over and places it between her lips, wincing at the colors as she tries her best for suction. Every part of her is broken – every part – and he thinks he might not be able to stand it. How can he help her when all he wants to do is run away from this room? How can he be expected to fix her when he’s still so broken himself?

She pulls away from the straw and just watches him with that one, fierce eye. She strikes him as more of an animal than a person now, and that disturbs him greatly. Then she mumbles, “Am I… dead?”

“No,” he blurts, feeling confused. “You’re home.”

And somehow, that simple phrase breaks her. The tears flow freely, even from her swollen eye, and she gasps and submits to the sobs because she has no other choice. He watches it happen, paralyzed, until she starts choking and then he’s dabbing at her face with tissues and trying to help her blow her nose.

“C’mon, Em… you can’t cry right now,” he whispers gently. “You’ll choke and you won’t be able to breathe. C’mon, breathe for me…”

Her chest hiccups as she tries to regain control, half groaning and half wheezing under the burden of being a hot mess. He keeps mumbling and wiping her face, not sure what he’s saying but seeing her calm under his fingers.

“H-home…” she stutters eventually.

“Yeah. Home.” He sags against the bed rail and stares.

“C-casey?”

“She’s here too. In the waiting room with your Mom.”

“Mom?”

He nods, resting his chin on his hands on the railing. “Elizabeth helps me with Casey now.”

Emily shuffles as if agitated, and Reid lays a palm on her arm to still her. “You’ve been gone a long time, Em. Things have changed.”

It feels like his statement expands over their heads in the room and muffles everything else. Emily stills and watches him, her one eye blinking as she tries to adjust without having much choice in the matter. Then she inclines her head against the pillow slightly – up and down. _Okay._

He sighs and watches her as she watches him. He doesn’t have the will to get into anything else right now, and it doesn’t seem fair to push it when she can’t respond or fight back. But they both know it’s coming – he got that much across to her at least. So, they stare, with his hand on her arm, until the nurse comes in to check her and update her chart. Reid rises to go and feels fingers brush his wrist. He looks back and sees she’s tried to curl two around him to catch his attention. He lifts his eyebrows at her.

“Coming… back?” she wheezes.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Why… would you?” she counters with a cough, good eye rolling to look at him and then away as if ashamed. He collects her two unbroken fingers in his hand and squeezes to get her attention.

“We’ve got things to settle. That’s why,” he says firmly. “I’m not running away from this. Understand?”

She watches him carefully and then nods again. He squeezes her fingers and then lays them out on the bed just as the nurse shoos him from the room. When he looks back from the door, her eye is still on him until the nurse pulls the curtain and separates them once more.


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good god... chapter 50? This was supposed to be a series of lighthearted drabbles.
> 
> I'm so terribly sorry :(

She puts off seeing Casey for as long as she can manage it. She wants to look less horrific, to be able to move and speak more effectively, but her body refuses to cooperate. Her bruises get _more_ vivid as they heal, and her concussion makes her head hurt if she concentrates on anything for too long. She’s also forgetting words at inconvenient moments, leaving her sputtering and frustrated with herself. Reid is beside her every day, acting as a translator and calming her when she wordlessly loses her cool. His voice cuts through her flashes of panic like a scalpel and draws her back to the present as if bound to him on a string.

“Steady, Em. One step at a time…”

She wishes it were that easy. She wishes she could stop feeling humid, sand-crusted air in her lungs when she drifts off to sleep. She wishes she could get through one day without a jackhammer trying to break her skull apart. And she wishes Reid would smile for her, just once.

On the fourth day, she can’t bear to be apart from Casey any longer and does her best to look human and less like a reanimated corpse. It takes her twenty minutes to prop herself up in bed and to straighten out her hair and hideous hospital gown. Then she looks at Reid and attempts to stow away her anxiety.

“It’ll be fine,” he murmurs, because, evidently, she’s not hiding much from him right now.

“I look like the creature from the Black Lagoon,” she grumbles as her head pings with the first hint of an impending headache.

He sighs and reaches for one of her hands. “Just remember that she’s a year old. She has the attention span of a fruit fly right now. And… we don’t know what she’ll remember so… be patient.”

His lips thin to a tight line, and then he nods and leaves her to fret in isolation. It feels like it takes him forever to come back, nothing to distract her but the tang of antiseptic cleaner and the beep of the cardiac monitor making her head feel bulbous and painful. Then the door whisks open and Reid is there, balancing a girl on his hip and giving her the smile that Emily herself craves. Emily blinks and tries to make her eyes work; she doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. The girl clings to Reid like a spider monkey, dark tangled curls drooping prettily around her face, dressed improbably in purple and teal with bright orange spaceships all over her. Emily doesn’t know who this is. She’s too big, too different… surely, she’d recognize something about her. She has a sudden, terrified moment when she thinks perhaps her head trauma has erased her child from her.

Then Reid says something and points at Emily, and Casey turns to look. And, oh… she has Reid’s smile, even though it melts away as she stares at the strange woman in the bed. She _remembers_ that.

“Look, Casey,” Reid coaxes when Casey ducks against his chest shyly. “It’s Mommy. Remember Mommy? From the picture? The one we say goodnight to?”

Emily’s chest seizes uncomfortably and she tries to fight it off with a smile and a hesitant wave that doesn’t aggravate her ribs too much.

“Hi, baby bird,” she tries. Casey frowns at her, stares hard. Then she turns back to Reid.

“Da?”

“I know she doesn’t look exactly the same, but she is Mommy. I promise you.”

Casey looks again, but this time cowers as far into Reid’s chest as she can physically manage. It’s obvious that she’s confused and doesn’t believe Reid, and she’s having a hard time with that sensation. Finally, she points at Emily.

“Ah-ma?” she asks, unsure.

“No, not Grandma, sweetheart.” Reid walks them closer, around the side of the bed. “ _Mommy._ ”

“You’ve gotten so big, honey… so big,” Emily gasps as her vision blurs a little. She wants to hold her to stop the atrophy of time they’ve lost. She forgets herself, reaches out a hand encased in plaster and leans forward, then hisses and jerks away violently as her body jackknifes with the grind of cracked ribs. “Ah! Son of a…”

Casey twitches back and meeps as she tries to crawl _up_ Reid’s torso. “Easy, Casey. Hold on, kiddo, not so fast…” He juggles her flailing limbs until he can corral them again, and then backs away from Emily with an apologetic look. “Maybe we’ll just sit to begin with. Get everyone used to each other again…”

Emily sags back with a wet hiss, and looks away. Her child is scared of her. She’s a frightening stranger wrapped in plaster and bandages, and nothing more. Her head swells in a tremendous throb that makes her wince and feel even more sorry for herself. _Damn you, Ian. Damn you for stealing everything I love away, even in death…_

“It’ll take time, Em,” Reid murmurs and she looks back to see him staring, wide-eyed and concerned while settling a wiggling Casey on his lap. “Like everything else.”

 _Everything_ else? Because she’s sure her body will heal, but she doesn’t have the same confidence when it comes to her family, her friends, her _life_ …

“She doesn’t remember me,” Emily whispers, lungs collapsing in on themselves as she says it. “Hell, even I didn’t recognize her when you first brought her in…”

“But you do now,” he says calmly. Emily watches Casey peek from under Reid’s arm and then hide her face in his shirt, like it’s a game.

“She has your grin…” Emily smiles and Casey chirps a little when she sees it and ducks away again. “And she’s still chatty.”

Reid laughs making Casey pop up her head to stare at him and figure out what’s happening. “You don’t know the half of it. Everyone’s always accused me of being a talker, but…” 

He bops her on the nose and Casey grins like a fiend, wiggling under his attention. Emily watches her daughter bloom under her father’s gaze, and as much as she’s hated every second of the last six months, she knows her choice to trust Casey to Reid is something she’ll never regret. It’s both joyful and disheartening to see them enjoy one another so completely. She always knew Reid would be an excellent father, even under tremendous strain, but the adoring way he looks at Casey is the way he once looked at her, and she knows that way is gone now. As if to prove her point, he looks up and his expression changes to polite regard, the love twinkling in his eyes clearly not for her. She sighs, stuffs it down deep inside her, and tells herself that _surviving_ and getting a second chance to be Casey’s mom will be enough. 

“Well, that I recognize,” she says quietly, unable to hold his gaze.

“You’ll recognize more,” he says after a moment, and with quiet confidence. When Emily looks back at him he’s rocking Casey gently but also exuding that same gentleness towards her, easing everyone in the room. “And she will too. You can’t escape the magic.”

“M-magic?”

He nods. Casey stuffs one of his tie ends into her mouth and mushes it. “Mom has this theory that there’s something immutably magical between parents and children, that the bond transcends time and logic. Honestly, I’m not sure if I believe that, but there’s no denying that we’ve all had our fair share of magic… Oh, Casey, no. This is one of Daddy’s _good_ ties…”

Reid fishes the slobbery fabric from his daughter’s mouth while Emily stares at him, stunned. Her heart does a painful skip-hop dance for a moment as she wonders if she heard him correctly. He thinks they were…?

“You think we are…” And suddenly the word is gone from her. She searches for it, knows what she means to convey and that only one word can achieve that, but it slips from her like water. She focuses too hard, making her head expand with a painful ‘NO’ as she scrapes around for her lost thought. She stutters, makes strange noises as she tries to sound out the word she can’t remember. Her hand flashes to her temple as she winces, knocking her soundly with her cast.

“Emily, Em, stop, stop…” he rushes, but she looks up at him and knows she seems angry and terrified that she was in control one second, and chaotically mute the next. “Don’t think,” he whispers urgently, face lined with worry. “Stop searching. Let it go.”

 _‘I don’t want to let it go!’_ she screams in her mind. _‘It’s important, Spence! I need to know…’_ She shakes her head viciously and moans. Casey whimpers from the safety of Reid’s lap.

“Emily, listen to me…”

She shakes her head again, even though the movement creates a throb so spectacularly painful that she sees different colors burst across her vision. _It was here… just a moment ago, I had it here…_

“Da, da… da-dee?” Casey mumbles.

“Hold on, Casey. Mommy needs help… Emily, I’m serious. Look at me.”

“Ah!” Casey screams loudly, enough for it to bounce around inside Emily’s sore head. She looks up without thinking, her broken hand still pressed against her temple. When she does, she sees Casey glaring at _her_ , one tiny hand outstretched and pointing. Her face is creased and serious. “Ah, _no_ ,” she declares forcefully at Emily. Emily just holds her head and stares as silence settles over all of them.

“Ummm… thanks, Casey.” Reid gives his child a triple-take before turning to focus on Emily. “Em? You with us?”

Emily nods, her head booming as if it will burst.

“Lie back in the bed.”

She shakes her head again. She doesn’t want to rest. Reid sighs as if he’s dealing with two stubborn children.

“Lie back. Stress increases your blood pressure while also narrowing your blood vessels which exacerbates pain in general. If you lie back and relax, you’ll reduce the strain on your heart, which will stall the stress hormone release, and ease your blood pressure. The aphasia will pass, trust me, but you have to calm down first.”

“Ah, no!” Casey declares again. Emily blinks at her and then lies back obediently. Casey looks at Reid and smiles. “Ah.”

“Yes. Indeed,” he says to her, then peers up at Emily and shrugs. “Perhaps she’ll be a doctor one day. A really pushy doctor.”

Emily hiccups out a laugh and then holds her head as it ripples in pain. She closes her eyes and submits to it knowing it won’t be conquered. After a minute, she hears Reid shuffle his chair closer to the bed.

“The question you were trying to ask… you wanted to know if I thought we were magical, didn’t you?”

She opens her eyes and winces into the light. He’s leaning towards her, half-forcing Casey to do the same, but Casey’s gripping the bed rail and peering at her with interest anyway. Emily nods, shielding her eyes with her cast. Reid sighs.

“We were. We both know that.”

Past tense. She stares back at him, biting her lip to give her something to focus on besides her bursting head and battered heart. She resents that he waits until she’s mute before launching into something about them. _‘Is it gone?’_ she tries to ask silently. _‘Was it even magic in the first place if it can be snuffed out?’_ If he understands, he doesn’t answer, just staring at her instead as sadness slowly leaks from him.

“Da?” Casey says eventually, and they both look at her as she tries to scoot towards the bed. She says his name again and then points at Emily. Reid raises his eyebrows and then scoops her underneath her arms.

“You want to…”

Casey just bounces and looks at Emily, so Reid lifts her over the bed rail to sit on the mattress with his hand supporting her back. Casey scoots a little closer and cautiously holds out her hand. Emily lowers her cast from her head and reaches forward hesitantly, fingers poking from the plaster end until they brush Casey’s. Casey makes a curious noise and then grabs a finger with hers and pulls.

“Easy, Casey…” Reid warns, but Emily makes a dismissive noise. She’ll take the pain; it’s worth it. Casey keeps a firm grip on Emily’s finger and just watches her.

_Hello, baby…_

Emily lifts her other hand and waves gently. Casey watches it happen, eyes following her hand down when she rests it in the bed once more. Then she turns to look at her again and simply says, “Ah”.

And then the moment passes. Casey reaches back for Reid and wants to be moving again. He tries to keep her still on his lap but she complains until he puts her on the floor with a stern warning to stay ‘germ-free and unpoisoned’ and then swats her gently on her diapered bum. He leans back in his chair with a sigh and watches her beetle across the floor to get into trouble. Emily marvels at how easy he makes this seem. It’s a far cry from the panic they fought through when they first brought Casey home and worried over every little thing. _‘I guess that’s what happens when you’re left to do it all on your own,’_ she tells herself harshly. It’s no wonder that he looks at her differently. There’s the betrayal – sure – but the real change is that he just doesn’t need her anymore. Not even to raise a child. She doesn’t belong to him – to them – and once she’s back on her feet again, where will she fit?

She watches him watch Casey with a curl of pride on his lips and her brain comes back online.

“Good,” she croaks, and he looks back at her both curious and relieved. “Good with her…”

His eyes flick away, embarrassed, but his smile remains. After a moment he shrugs. “I’ve had a lot of help. It was hard to admit I needed that at first, but I know now that we wouldn’t have made it on our own. Casey wouldn’t be this happy without all of her ‘team’ pitching in.” His eyes slide back to her. “I don’t think we’re meant to do things like this alone. I’ve come to realize there’s nothing wrong in asking for help.”

He holds her stare for a long moment before looking back to Casey on the floor, and then he must move quickly as Casey decides that an electrical outlet looks interesting. Emily isn’t sure if his statement is a condemnation or something else entirely, but she’s certain he meant something by it. She knows him too well to think otherwise. She wants to ask him for help now, more than he’s already given, but it doesn’t seem fair and she’s not sure she’s strong enough to hear him say ‘no’. It’s one thing to be there for her as she recovers, but it’s a different level of commitment to declare that he’ll be around after that. At this moment, she doesn’t even know if she can go home when the hospital releases her; their place is still ‘home’ in her mind, but he may have other ideas about that. She distantly hears Reid trying to dissuade Casey from playing with ‘the electric wall snake’, and Casey making offended squeals when he drags her away from death-by-electrocution. Then there’s the preemptive wail of a baby tantrum.

“C’mon, Casey. I’m not denying you fun stuff, really… electrical burns are terrible. Trust Daddy on this.”

She hears him huff and Casey cry, and then she’s surprised when his voice is so much closer to her. She looks up, shocked, and sees him struggling to hold a cranky child while also staring worriedly at her.

“What is it?” he asks. “What are you thinking about right now? You have the strangest look on your face.”

“The future,” she croaks, and decides to use her hit-and-miss verbal skills as a shield against explaining further. 

She’s got a long road of choices ahead of her. Whereas once she felt trapped by an absence of them, she now feels burdened at having too many, and none of them seem to lead her in the direction she desperately wants to go.


	51. Chapter 51

He’s hurrying through the hospital corridors, two coffees in hand, and his sneakers are making terrible squeaking noises as he shuffles past nurses and patients and relatives who’ve come to visit. He’s late, and he hates being late, but there was an especially long wait in the café today. His anxiety is higher than normal and, as he dodges around some slow-moving patients with saline drips in the hallway, his mind wanders to _why_ he’s anxious. It’s ridiculous really; he’s rushing for someone who’s bed-bound, although she’s set to be released in a few days. Then his brain tells him he’s hurrying to relieve Elizabeth because he said he’d be there at noon to take over. Elizabeth is stern about punctuality. But he can’t lie to himself – there’s more to it than the wrath of Grandma. He’s rushing _to see_ Emily, even if he’s conflicted about it. In the past two weeks, he’s fallen into the routine of seeing her daily, and while it began stilted and awkward, their years of familiarity quickly reasserted themselves so that he finds he can sit and share time with her and Casey pleasantly. They haven’t talked about anything serious yet – anything about _them_ \- and perhaps that’s why he’s hurrying as well. But there’s no doubt that a part of him is enjoying her presence again. Like muscle memory, he’s eased that she’s there. But he still has no idea what he wants moving forward, hence the conflicted enjoyment.

And Casey isn’t helping matters. She’s slowly but surely becoming attached to Emily again. Part of her seems fascinated by someone who has even less autonomy than she does, watching her mother being bossed around by doctors, nurses, and interns… She even does some of the bossing herself, which Emily submits to with a sly smile. But Reid suspects that Casey is starting to experience some muscle memory of her own, or at least the magical connection that Diana predicted. She allows Emily to hold her now, as readily as she would Reid or Elizabeth, and she talks _to_ her rather than around her. Reid’s ribs feel too tight around him when he sees them together on Emily’s bed, Casey chirping loudly and Emily watching, her eyes riveted to her tiny storyteller. He doesn’t begrudge them this at all – it’s the way it should be – but he doesn’t know what comes next and he’s worried about Casey becoming close to someone who may not be there every day. He doesn’t even know where Emily will go when she’s released from the hospital. Will she insist on staying away? Should he offer her ‘home’ back to her? Does she assume that she’s moving back with them regardless of the past six months? He doesn’t know what to do and has been a coward in avoiding thinking about it.

He growls at himself and his troublesome brain as he finally turns the corner towards her room. Deciding that _he_ needs to find a way to start this discussion, he pushes through her door and finds her curled on her bed with Casey tucked into her less damaged side and snoozing. Elizabeth is perched on the edge of the bed like it’s made of needles, as she always is. Neither of them notice him enter and when he hears a snippet of their discussion, he stops and huddles next to an alcove, hiding from view.

“I can’t tell you what to do, Emily…”

“That would be a first, Mom.”

“Dear, please don’t be like that. I’m trying to respect both you and him in this matter.”

Emily sighs. “Yeah, okay, Sorry. I’m just frustrated, I guess. But I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

Reid can’t see Elizabeth’s face but imagines the surprise on it as she absorbs that for a long, quiet moment.

“It’s just…” Emily hesitates. “Nothing’s changed for me. I mean, besides the obvious physical stuff and the end of something that’s hung over me for years…”

“That’s actually quite a lot of change, dear. You can’t ignore it. You’re different from when you left and you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of that.”

“But, Mom… what I mean is I still love him. Just the same as before. No matter what else has happened, _that’s_ still there. But he doesn’t. I can see it when he looks at me.”

Reid’s breath stops until his chest hurts. Elizabeth shifts on the edge of the bed and he sees her smooth the sheet next to her meticulously. “He was heartbroken, Emily,” Elizabeth murmurs simply and quietly. “You can’t ask him to forget that.”

“And I wasn’t?” Emily’s voice gets higher and unsteady. “Don’t you think I knew what I was doing was horrible when I left him? I just couldn’t put him in danger. Him or Casey – I _couldn’t._ I’ve watched him die twice already, Mom. I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t lose him.”

“But you did, didn’t you? Just not how you expected.” Elizabeth’s devastating timing strikes again, and Reid hears Emily gasp at it. He’s feeling tight and lightheaded too, and then he realizes he’s still holding his breath. He makes a quiet gasp of his own to recover.

“Mom…” It comes out as a soft sob. 

“Now, now. You’ll wake Casey,” Elizabeth shushes gently and then takes a deep breath. “I can’t tell you what to do, Emily, except this: respect him. Though I can’t say I know him well, I’ve become fond of him. What I have seen suggests a thoughtful man with a profound depth of feeling. But he has issues with that and you have violated them. I know why you did it, I know it was well-meant, but some wounds aren’t rational, my dear. Words may not be enough to mend this rift. You need to be prepared for that, and prepared to step away if he asks you to.”

Reid squeezes one coffee cup too tightly and a hot drip slips down over his fingers making him twitch. He just got her back – he doesn’t want her to go again. That’s his first impulse, beyond the confusion of how they work this out or how they ever trust one another again. The coffee burn makes him take note of this reaction, turn it over in his mind. Something whispers, _‘if you ignore this, you’ll regret it’_ …

“I also know…” Elizabeth continues after a long moment. “That any man who feels that much doesn’t stop loving on a dime.”

“Mom,” Emily chokes. “He looks at Casey the way he used to look at me. He adores her. When he looks at me now… well…”

“Casey _needs_ him,” Elizabeth sighs knowingly. “Her love is uncomplicated and undisguised. She can’t leave him and she’s incapable of hurting him. It’s completely safe for him to adore her. _You_ left him. In his mind, that means you don’t need him-”

“But I do-”

“I told you: this isn’t rational. You aren’t uncomplicated or undisguised, and you’ve hurt him. It really isn’t surprising that he’s retreated into a safer love, is it?”

Emily makes a non-committal noise.

“He’s funneling everything he feels into this little girl. It’s a form of survival. But I doubt he’s stopped loving you. He doesn’t seem like that sort to me.” Elizabeth takes another long pause. “You should give him time, but above all, respect. That’s the only advice I’ll offer.”

There’s no sound in the room for ages except choked-off sniffles and the rustle of sheets. Reid watches as Elizabeth leans closer and strokes hair gently out of Emily’s eyes.

“Oh, my little girl…” she says quietly, sounding uneven for the first time. “Don’t cry. Things will work out as they must and we will all adjust accordingly. This too shall pass…”

“Mom,” Emily whispers so quietly that he can barely make it out. “If he can’t… Could I stay with you for a while? I don’t want to be alone. I-I think I’ll need help…”

“Oh Emily,” Elizabeth gasps wetly and then pulls her daughter close. “Of course, dear, of course. I’m always here for you. I’ll always help. We’ll figure it out together.”

Emily makes a cry that’s half sob and half-discomfort from her broken bones, but Reid watches her undamaged fingers cling to her mother’s back. He’s finding it hard to breathe again around the lump in his throat and his eyes prick and blur to make things worse. He blinks rapidly to stall it all in its tracks. Then Casey makes a quiet noise, woken by her mother’s movement.

“Muh?” she asks.

“C’mere, baby bird,” Emily says wetly, and when Reid peeks around the corner again, all three Prentiss women are folded up together, rocking gently in silence. There’s a burst of pride in the center of his sadness to see his daughter held by mother and grandmother together, but also to see Emily giving herself to Elizabeth. This gentle moment is essential for them both.

And then he turns, silently letting himself back out into the corridor. He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, shutting out the bustle of hospital staff rushing past him. He swallows down the gag of panic to a place he’s avoided ever since he got the call from Hotch in Vegas. He walks there in the darkness, circling hesitantly, unsure of what he’ll find after all this time. She’s there waiting for him under their tree, eyes wide and fearful, clutching a book close to her chest. He waits in the shadows, looking at her and fighting to decide…

_I still love you. I think I always will._

_But I need time. I don’t know what to do. Are you strong enough to wait for me?_

 

Inside him, the girl continues to stare from under the tree as he turns away and retreats. She doesn’t give him an answer, and he doesn’t know if she’ll still be there when he comes back.


	52. Chapter 52

He looks around the room while he waits for her to return from the bathroom. It takes her an excruciating amount of time to negotiate it, what with all the hissing and limping, but she absolutely insists on doing it and he knows better than to argue. Besides, she has to learn to do things on her own again anyway. She’ll be released tomorrow. As he looks around, he realizes that she has no personal effects from her trip overseas. No i.d., no phone, and just the hospital scrubs she was given in Germany. He guesses she doesn’t have to worry about packing before tomorrow.

He hears a hiss behind him and turns to find her leaning against the bathroom doorframe, but looking at the window beyond him. Her eyes are tight with the pain she’s usually in when she’s moving around, but there’s a distance there as well. He takes a moment and watches her: the bruises are mostly faded, she’s gained a little weight, and she generally looks less tired, but there’s something missing. Something elemental. He wonders if she’ll ever get it back.

“I want to go home,” she murmurs absently, still watching the grey day outside the window.

“You will. Tomorrow,” he says hesitantly. Then she drags her eyes away from the scene beyond and looks directly at him.

“No,” she explains quietly. “I’m asking you, Spencer: will you _let_ me come home?”

She doesn’t make an argument for it. She doesn’t plead with him. She just waits for his decision, and based on the conversation he overheard between her and Elizabeth, he knows she’s prepared herself for either answer he might give. He thinks about the girl inside him, waiting under their tree. He’s asked her to wait, but is he prepared to wait for her as well?

“Of course,” he whispers. It slides out of him without the debate he thought he’d have with himself over it. And when it does, he feels something _release_ inside, like letting a balloon string slip from your fingers. “You’re coming home.”

She doesn’t say anything back, just smiles at him in quiet relief and gratitude. 

Despite his determination to be cautious with her, he finds himself smiling back.


	53. Chapter 53

The first thing that hits her as she steps back into the apartment is the smell: books, it overwhelmingly smells of books. Was it always like that? She can’t remember. She stands just inside the front door and inhales as deeply as her healing ribs will allow. Something in her that’s been wound tightly for half a year uncurls a fraction. It’s a tiny thing, but she notices, and the relief feels magnified somehow.

“Off you go,” Reid huffs behind her as he sets a wriggling Casey on the floor and she takes off like a shot. Emily looks back at him as he closes the door and balances some groceries at the same time; she’s still mostly useless and can’t carry anything despite repeated attempts to try. “Go find Aur…”

She blinks. “Who’s Aur?”

“Her stuffed rabbit. Don’t worry, she’ll introduce you. It’ll be like meeting the Queen.”

She smiles, but then he drops his keys in a bowl on the side table and she sees her cell phone, her keys, her identification all laid out where she left it six months earlier. She gasps quickly and wonders if he did it on purpose, or if he’s left them there all along, being sure to dust them and rearrange them over time.

He hears her and then follows her eyes, and his get sad as they land on the items. He shrugs. “I didn’t pack anything away. Everything’s where you left it.”

“You… you were certain I’d come back?” she whispers, blinking hard. He shakes his head, no.

“The opposite, actually. I just… didn’t know what to do with them, I guess.”

He won’t look at her, and then shuffles past heading to the kitchen with the grocery bags. She watches him go, imagines him living in this snow globe of memories, and openly wonders how he can’t hate her. She swallows hard and limps after him. This is the first time they’ve come close to discussing _any of it_ , and she was worried about how that would happen. In the end, it appears to have manifested on its own, and she wants to get on with it, like tearing away a bandage quickly. He’s stocking the fridge, back purposefully aligned so he can’t see her behind him.

“Can we talk about that? Why I left?” she asks quietly. He straightens but doesn’t turn to face her. He sighs and his shoulders seem stooped with the burden of this.

“Right now? You’ve only just stepped through the door…”

“There won’t ever be a good time for this, Spence. Don’t you think it’d be better to start the conversation sooner rather than later?”

“I’d prefer not to talk about it at all…”

“That’s not very realistic.”

“I know that,” he says tightly, still staring at the fridge door instead of her. “But maybe I don’t want our first conversation back here to be a fight.”

His words are like a knife strike thrown wide, designed to make her back away. But she knows him, at least she did once. If he pushes it all away it’ll fester in him. She’d rather have him screaming than slowly poisoning himself.

She takes a deep breath and steps into the breach. “I knew what I was doing that last night. I knew I’d be leaving to hunt Doyle, and no matter what I told you, I knew I’d be leaving alone.”

It feels as though the words hang over them like a sickly cloud, refusing to move on or dissipate. After an excruciating amount of silence, Reid slowly turns to look at her, eyes pinched and rimmed with red, long lines drawing his face in undisguised anger. She wants to flinch away, to hide, but she forces herself to stand firm and take it. It’s no less than what she deserves.

“You slept with me to distract me.” He’s whispering but the words are clipped and sharp. “You promised me we were a team. But it was all just to throw me off. How do you even _consider_ doing that to someone you love?”

It’s like he’s just shot her in the chest. She’s suddenly acutely concave and bends into the pain of her ribs as she tries to suck down some air. She grasps a counter top to steady herself while he watches, glaring and not moving to help at all. Then she swallows all of it down, again and again, because she _needs_ to be clear-minded and present for this, not clouded by emotions that seem bigger than both of them.

“I did _not_ sleep with you to distract you, Spencer,” she coughs past the pain in her chest. “I slept with you because I love you and I thought it would be the last time.”

She lets the statement float between them for a while. Reid keeps glaring but also twitches a little and then tries to ignore it.

“It was selfish of me, yes,” she continues after another charged moment. “But I was sure I wouldn’t survive. I just wanted… I wanted the feel of you one final time, to carry with me. It was a vivid reminder of what I was fighting for. It was _my_ goodbye. So, yeah, it was calculated, but not in the way you think it was.”

His face changes – a sort of blankness as he goes inward to some place she can’t get access to. There’s no way to tell how he’s reacting, and she ruefully thinks that maybe he can’t avoid this conversation, but he’s denying her his participation in it anyway. Cagey bastard.

She lets out a huge sigh at being left alone in the kitchen, and keeps going. “I never intended to let you come with me. I won’t lie about that decision. But you mistakenly believe that’s because I didn’t trust you or have faith in your ability to back me up.” She bends and winces as she tries to make eye contact with him again. Her groan draws his eyes back to her, but he looks as if he resents it.

“There’s no one I trust more than you, Spence, and I mean that tactically as well. You’ve always had my back – I’ve never had to ask, it’s always been there – that willingness to face the insurmountable with me. I know you’d die for me, and that was the problem.”

His eyebrows lift a little and so does his grimace. She takes a wet breath that shakes her, and she can’t hide it from him. He looks even more confused.

“I left you behind, but not because I didn’t need you. Fuck, Spence, I _really_ needed you in the last six months…”

His face goes blank again, but in a different way, as if he doesn’t understand the words coming out of her mouth even though he should.

“I left you behind because you’re my weakness.”

He’s blinking rapidly now, lines creasing his face. He shakes his head and she doesn’t know if he’s rejecting her statement or if he’s confused.

“I couldn’t watch you die for me, for this… stupid clusterfuck of my own creation,” she spits out hatefully, loathing that _she’s_ the reason why they are failing despite every attempt she’s made to avoid that. “I’ve watched you die before, Spencer. I couldn’t do it again, not now. And Doyle would’ve seen that in a heartbeat. He would’ve used that, used you, and I’d be helpless against it. I’d be dead long before he finally ended it.” She blinks hard through the blurriness she’s struggling to keep to herself, and stares him down. “I never saw you as weak, never worried about your commitment to a dilemma that you had no part in making. It was my own fragility that drove me – I’d rather my own death than yours. It’s as simple as that. And then there’s Casey…”

Reid’s eyes snap to hers.

“If we both died for this,” she gulps. “Who would’ve been there for her?”

He looks away.

“It had to be you, Spencer. I needed my little girl to be okay, to grow up happy and smart and strong. Only you could give her that.”

“And you couldn’t?” he huffs.

“Not with you gone, no,” she murmurs and hangs her head. She can’t look at him but she hears him growl and then march away from her, shoes squeaking on the tile floor. Then he stops and sighs at her from a distance.

“The thing of it is… you didn’t give me a damned choice, Emily. You acted like you did, but you didn’t.”

She looks up and he’s leaning against the counter and staring at her with a painful expression that catches her breath. It’s not hate or anger or even dismissal – it’s an aching plea to understand.

“You walked away on your terms but didn’t think about where that left me. I _knew_ the odds were bad… Did you consider that by denying me the chance to help, you were sentencing me to the grief you couldn’t stand yourself? And I didn’t have the luxury of saying goodbye on my own terms.”

She gulps, tries to say something, but can’t as the tears begin to streak down her cheeks.

“I have _struggled_ with surviving this, Em,” he growls wetly and points. “I’ve had to because of Casey, and because you didn’t leave me with any alternatives.”

“I’m s-sorry, Spence,” she hiccups, chest aching, eyes burning, tight and strung out everywhere. “I love you…”

“How am I supposed to believe any of this now?” His voice waivers and even through her blurred vision, she can see his cheeks are wet too.

She covers her face with her cast hand and leans hard into the counter top as she lets the sobs wrack her for a terrible moment. It’s a pressure release; she has to ease the build-up inside before she can speak again. He listens to her cry. He doesn’t move to help, and she doesn’t expect him to. She takes a handful of deep gulps to calm herself when the storm passes. She’s scrubbing her face painfully with the edge of her cast, but she doesn’t care.

“I can’t make you believe it,” she croaks, trying to stand tall once more. “You’ll either choose to, or you won’t. That ball’s in your court now. But that’s how it happened. I was half out of my mind with fear back then, but I won’t use it as an excuse. I understood there’d be consequences to my decisions. I guess I just thought the odds were good that I wouldn’t live to face them. That’s a shitty justification – I guess you were right: I was running away.”

His eyes go wide in shock and she doesn’t understand why. But she’s too wrung out to pick the expression apart.

“Whatever you decide about this, Spencer,” she whispers shakily. “We’ll deal with it. I just wanted an opportunity to explain. That’s all.”

He hesitates for a moment, then gulps too. “I… don’t know if I can forgive this.”

“I know,” she says quietly and is surprised to find herself smiling a small, sad smile at him. “I _know you_. But we had to talk it out regardless, didn’t we?”

They stare at each other, from opposite corners of the kitchen, for a long, silent minute. Then she can’t stand it anymore, and turns away shuffling back into the living room and following the sounds of Casey’s chatter to her toys. She sits gingerly on the sofa, remembering every memory made there, and is finally introduced to Aur the rabbit. He is presented like royalty despite having one very scruffy ear. She chokes back her tears and reaches for Casey and her friend, trying to enjoy the second chance she’s been inexplicably given. 

Reid doesn’t reappear from the kitchen for a very long time.


	54. Chapter 54

If the kitchen talk was difficult, the rest of the day gets awkward from there. Emily notices the camp bed in the nursery but says nothing. When Reid declares that she take the master bedroom, he doesn’t make eye contact. She knows the moment she steps into it that he hasn’t slept there in months. 

“I’m not kicking you out of your bed,” she says.

“You’re not kicking me anywhere. I haven’t slept there in quite a while.” He looks up at her suddenly. “You didn’t expect us to share a bed, did you?”

She twitches and so does he, feeling awful at how bitter it sounds.

“You need the bed,” he offers quietly. “For your ribs, your leg.”

“Is that why there’s a camp bed in Casey’s room?”

He sighs. “I slept there for a while. It made us both feel better. Now I take the sofa. It’s surprisingly comfortable, actually.”

“Okay,” she nods. “Okay…” She shrugs and steps into the room as if she’s letting it drop because she doesn’t want to start another fight. He sighs again and walks away.

They spend the late afternoon focusing on Casey, and after they feed her dinner, things feel a little eased simply because Casey is sated and happy, and it’s infectious. Reid’s cleaning up, calling out from the kitchen to ask if Emily feels up to watching a movie, but he gets nothing in response. He walks out and finds both her and Casey sleeping on the couch, arms loosely curled around each other. He steals over as quietly as he can and sits on the coffee table watching them. There’s a very real part of him that’s overjoyed at this: his daughter back in her mother’s arms. He’s been grieving the loss of his family for so long, even having only ‘lost’ one of them. Now, in an act that he chooses not to label as ‘a miracle’, he has that back again. He can’t help the happiness and relief that brings out in him. But he doesn’t know if they’ll ever be a true family again. They’ll always be parents to Casey, and he can imagine them living together to raise her, even if it’s only platonically. But a side of him is rebelling at this compromise.

He looks at Emily. Really _looks_ at her. She’s still beautiful to him, bruises, haggard looks and all. He’s dreamt of her so often in the time they’ve been separated, more than he likes to admit. Snippets of memories from past cases, arguing in the grocery store, taking Casey to the park for the first time, birthdays and Thanksgivings and team dinners, hushed moments in darkness when they held each other… He used to wake from them and adjusted to grieving, truly believing that he’d never see her again. It softened his anger and made his feelings sad and wistful instead. Now she’s here – alive and real – and so is the anger. But that’s not all there is. She stood in their kitchen and admitted that it was her weakness, not his, that made her selfish. She told him she loved him and all the things she said meshed perfectly with everything he thought he already knew about her. He _believed_ her. It felt real. 

But how can he trust it? 

And he knows he might never get over her. If they can’t find a way back to each other, if they reduce themselves to raising Casey and nothing more, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get past it. He can’t see himself loving another, and even if that happened, how would it work with Emily still there in his life every day? He feels obligated and stuck, and also heartsick and lonely. Sometimes he wishes he’d never revealed himself to her, just remained friends instead. But then he looks at Casey and he _can’t_ wish that, won’t wish away his wondrous child…

And then there’s his own secret guilt. Hotch’s voice in his head won’t leave him alone: _‘did you help to push her into this?’_ She told him she wanted to protect him, that Doyle would use him against her. She’d told him both that last evening as well as now, and he knew she was right. It played right into Doyle’s revenge fantasy and his desire for domination over a woman who’d bested him. She never lied about that but he refused to accept it. He told her that she never gave him a choice, but he’d done exactly the same thing to her. And then Hotch’s voice comes to him again: _‘what are you lying about?’_

Every choice they had in this situation was impossible. If they’d left together, they’d probably have died together, orphaning Casey. If one or the other left on their own, they’d die leaving the other alone and miserable, and possibly still at risk if Doyle survived. Basically, no one got out unscathed or happy. And yet, here she is and Doyle isn’t. It shouldn’t be possible, but it is – they beat the odds. The only thing standing between them now is their ability to understand one another again. It seems like such a small thing… to trust. And for the first time, the decision is entirely his, which makes him very uncomfortable. Before all this, they’d have decided _as a team_ , and he misses her connection, her insight, and the assurance that’s always given him from the moment they first became friends. He leans forward, elbows balanced on his knees and sighs deeply.

“What am I gonna do about you?” he whispers. In his mind, he adds ‘dumbass’ to the question and makes himself snort unexpectedly. Emily’s eyelids flutter and then she’s looking at him with a sleepy, dark gaze, eyebrows arching slightly to find him staring.

“Was I snoring?”

“Yes,” he lies. 

“Oh. That’s embarrassing,” she slurs.

“It sure is. Especially since no one else has ever snored in the entirety of human history,” he says dryly as she gives him a wicked side-eye. He stoops in close to collect Casey in his arms. His face is inches from Emily’s, his hands brush her side as he lifts their daughter away. She watches him carefully, saying nothing but eyes no longer sleepy.

“You should get some real sleep. It’s been a long day for you.” He’s close enough that she can probably feel his breath on her cheek. Then he stands, folding Casey against him as he stares. “I’m sorry. For arguing earlier, I mean… That could’ve waited.”

“I told you – best to get on with it,” she says quietly, looking a little awed by him. It makes him nervous for some reason. “I want to be honest with you. About all of this.”

“That could get painful,” he warns, snuggling Casey close. It’s certainly true, but there’s a small burst of excitement behind his ribs as he says it, like the prospect is a little thrilling too. He rolls that unexpected reaction over in his mind curiously. Emily just shrugs.

“I’ll take that. I don’t have much more to lose.”

“You have everything to lose,” his eyebrows crease in confusion. “We both do. Everything we have left.” And he finds that he absolutely means it.

Her eyes go wide and she licks her lips once, nervously. “You’re right,” she gulps. “I guess I have to work on my optimism.”

He doesn’t know what to say back, so he turns towards the nursery and tries not to feel confused.

“Spencer,” she calls out quietly. He looks back and sees her wince as she turns awkwardly on the couch to face him. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For agreeing to… this. For taking me in, taking care of me. I didn’t expect you to.”

“I told you I would always take care of you a long time ago,” he mumbles. That isn’t a ‘him and her’ thing, it’s a ‘two friends under a tree’ thing.

“Yes, but that was _before._ That obligation ended when I left. And this is… complicated. You didn’t have to take it on at all.”

“Complication isn’t a factor,” he sighs, rocking Casey. “We were always complicated. From Day One. I didn’t expect ‘returning from a suicide mission’ to be any easier.”

She pauses for a moment. “Is that what you think it was? A suicide mission?”

“You said yourself that you didn’t expect to come back.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t _want to._ I didn’t want to die. I was prepared to die for my family – sure – but I wanted to live for you too. I did what I did for love. I always wanted to come back, if there was a chance for that.” She twists a little more, and he wants to tell her to stop doing that to her healing fractures. But she stares him down and says, “I never wanted to leave you alone in this life, Spence. I should’ve found another way. But because I didn’t, I _had_ to make it home again. Or die trying. In the end, that was the only thing that kept me moving.”

“Even if…” he swallows down his dry mouth. “Coming back meant we’d never be together again?”

He expects her to flinch or react at the possibility he’s suggesting: that they will never recover from this. But she doesn’t. Her expression gets distant and sad, but she doesn’t deny the reality of it. She just nods solemnly.

“The goal was always to come back. If you don’t want me as you once did…” She stops, takes a breath, and starts again. “That doesn’t change the promise I made. I’ll keep it from a respectful distance if I have to.”

“Promise?” he whispers, air suddenly gone from his lungs as Casey mewls sleepily against his chest.

“To have your back the way you’ve always had mine. To help with Casey. To be your friend, no matter what happens or what form that takes. I made that promise the night you went over that bridge railing. I told _whoever_ might be listening to my begging that if they gave you back to me, I’d stick by you for the rest of my life. And then they found you downstream… it was a done deal.”

He blinks at her as his heart rattles around inside him, confused and frantic simultaneously. She’s calm and not really looking at him, as if she’s just repeating a vow she’s said to herself a thousand times before. Then her eyes flick up to his and takes in his expression.

“It’s okay if you can’t love me again, Spencer,” she says quietly. “That’s just one type of love, and not the only one that exists between us. But I won’t give up on all of it though – everything we built together before that night by the river. I will not allow the Doyle thing to destroy a decade of memories. You _know_ that you know me. You _know_ that not everything over those years was a lie. So, I’m fighting for that.”

For the first time since she’s returned, he thinks about _the entirety_ of their relationship: her first day and how intimidated he was by her looks, the way she called him out when he was high when no one else would, her jokes and her sass and the way she slowly insinuated herself into his geekiness, the fallout from the Benjamin Cyrus case when he first understood they were closer than colleagues and willing to put themselves on the line for each other, the trust that grew from that and the subtle realization that perhaps the friendship he’d been looking for didn’t just exist in books… There were dozens of other memories, hundreds of moments that existed long before they were _more_. And she’s right: Ian Doyle can’t be given the power to eradicate all of that. 

“Love has never been the problem,” he murmurs eventually, shocking both himself and her, as her eyebrows shoot upwards. He turns away quickly and heads for the nursery before he utters something else that he’s unsure about. But, really, love isn’t the issue; it’s trust. As he puts Casey to bed, he ruminates on what has to happen – for both of them – to reestablish that trust. 

He returns to the living room and expects her to be there, waiting to pick up where they left off, but she’s not. The door to the bedroom is closed and he thinks, _‘Yeah, that’s probably wise… baby steps…’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates have been haphazard lately due to my work schedule. The next chapter won't be up for another week at least due to work obligations, but hopefully things should become more regular after that. If you've made it this far, I apologize for the delay and appreciate your continued readership.


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies again for the delay in updating. I'm trying to get back on track, and we're so close to the end now...

Abandoning friends and family, and then returning to face the music, has its ups and downs. Casey is the easiest to win over – children forgive so readily when they are young. Reid is the toughest. Obviously. But what Emily didn’t consider when she thought about coming home again was how she’d win back her friends. None of them are too eager to speak with her when she’s discharged from the hospital and it makes her unexpectedly isolated in her resurrection. She kicks herself for ignoring their place in all of this. It makes sense that they’d feel abandoned and betrayed as well, but it just never occurred to her before now.

So, while trying to navigate around Reid in a home that doesn’t feel _comfortable_ , she pines for the understanding of friends who are just as wary and distant. She tries to make amends with them, but some days she just wants someone to talk to without a litany of recrimination beforehand. Sometimes it feels that all she’s doing from sun up to sun down is apologizing and stepping around gently.

The one who reaches out first surprises her completely.

“How’s it going?” His voice is quiet and calm, and he’s calling in the middle of the day, which she _knows_ he doesn’t have time for.

“Okay, I guess,” she huffs in surprise. She’s a little excited that she might have someone to talk to, but wary about what she should say to him. Casey babbles happily from the floor in front of her where she’s trying to stuff Aur inside a Tonka truck half his size.

“Emily…” Hotch drawls gently. Emily rolls her eyes at him over the phone.

“As well as can be expected considering Reid hates me, my child doesn’t know who I am, and my friends don’t know if they can trust me or not,” she explains a bit tersely and then gets angry at herself for her attitude. He won’t call back if she keeps being defensive.

“Reid doesn’t hate you. He wouldn’t have let you back into his home if he did. He’s just hurt, and you know how he gets when he’s hurting.”

“Yeah. He turtles on you. He’s turtling like a fiend at the moment,” she sighs.

Hotch waits a moment before answering. “You can’t blame him, Emily. And you can’t push him out of it,” he says gently.

“I know.”

There’s a much longer bout of silence between them. Somehow, living in silence with Hotch isn’t as awkward as it is with other people. She takes a moment to wonder why that is.

“How’s Casey doing?” he continues eventually.

“She’s good. Amazing, really. And she’s so big! I hardly recognized her at first. She’s so much like him – Daddy’s little girl.”

“Look closer,” he says with unexpected warmth. “She’s more like you than you think. And her time spent with Elizabeth has brought that out even more.”

“I understand I have you to thank for bringing Mom into this,” she says dryly. “I’m not sure how I feel about that…”

“Elizabeth needed something after you left, and Reid _really_ needed something. I took a shot in the dark and it worked out well for them. And she adores Casey.”

“That’s ‘cause the kid’s a little bit magic,” she smiles and watches Casey zoom her rabbit-stuffed dump truck through the air with glee. 

“She is,” he chuckles, which Emily finds oddly charming. “Casey’s the glue that holds that strange pair together. But they’ve come to genuinely like one another as well. It’s surprising. I was simply seeking a way to keep everyone afloat until you returned…”

Emily takes a shocked breath that aggravates her ribs. “Why… did you decide to do that?” There’s care in his decision that she doesn’t fully understand, given their history. There’s care in his choice to call now as well.

Hotch pauses for a moment, perhaps to find the right words. He’s always so precise with her, so measured. Always, except for _once._

“These are people I care for, and things were falling apart,” he says. “Your family… didn’t deserve this. Your life was on a different trajectory until Doyle resurfaced. You had happiness – you were _allowing_ yourself to be happy, Emily. I didn’t think I’d ever see that happen for you. I wanted to do what I could to protect that. Until you came home.”

Her chest seizes, thinking about him protecting what is hers, protecting something he himself lost long ago. She wants to tell him what this means to her. She wants to ask forgiveness for what she’s done to him, but she can’t find the words. “Aaron…” she croaks out wetly, and he makes an uncomfortable growling noise at her over the phone.

“None of that, Emily,” he warns. “You’d do the same for me. We both know that.” It’s true: she absolutely would. Even though they’ve never made any commitment like this to each other out loud.

“Why… why aren’t you angry with me, Aaron?” she asks when she can get her voice under control again. Casey is looking up at her curiously as she wipes her cheeks clean.

“Oh, I am. Trust me,” he says calmly. “Your decision was irrational, tactically unsound, and went against everything you know about capturing a fugitive. I’m very unhappy that you chose to ignore your considerable skill set as well as the knowledge base available to you through the Unit. And all in an effort which devastated your family and friends.”

Emily withstands his judgment. She has great respect for it and it doesn’t really come as a surprise to her. But then he lets out a long sigh over the phone.

“But I also know you,” he murmurs. “Your choice didn’t shock me as it did everyone else. I was mostly worried for your safety. And I was worried for Reid. His sense of rejection was visceral. You know that there are things he can intellectually comprehend but never _accept_ …”

“Yes, I know,” she says quietly, wiping her face more ferociously. Casey crawls up from the floor, grabbing Emily’s jeans to hoist herself closer. Her little face is full of confused wrinkles.

“Ma,” she says cautiously and points a finger at Emily’s tears. “No…”

“Is that Casey?” Hotch’s voice warms again. “Tell her I say hi.”

Emily clears her throat. “Uncle Aaron’s on the phone, Casey. Wanna say hi?” She holds her phone out as Casey squeals with joy, caution forgotten, grabbing with sticky fingers instead. She makes a series of excited burbles and nonsensical sounds that probably has great meaning for her. Emily can hear Hotch laughing over the phone. She lets them chatter for a minute and Hotch is still laughing when she takes the phone back. It’s a miracle very few people experience, but Casey can bring it out in less than a minute. The kid is _totally_ magic.

“She’s _so_ chatty,” Emily smiles as Hotch’s laughter peters out.

“She’s definitely Reid’s kid. The world is fascinating and all she wants to do is talk about it. If only we were all that interesting…”

She waits for him to fall silent and thinks she can hear the faint buzz of the bullpen in the background. He probably has a busy day ahead of him, like always.

“Thanks for calling,” she says softly.

“Any time,” he mumbles. “And you can call me. If you ever need to talk.”

“You’re busy.”

“I’m never too busy for a friend, Emily,” he intones seriously. She nods in acceptance of another promise they’ll never say aloud: they’ll be there for each other. Then he takes a loud breath in. “May I… give you some unsolicited advice? I understand that this really isn’t my place…”

There’s an unspoken _‘for obvious reasons’_ tacked onto the end of that sentence. She nods again. “Sure.”

“Let go of any expectations you might have for Reid,” he says in a long huff, and her chest tightens. This isn’t a new realization to her, but she’s been denying it vigorously ever since she woke up stateside. “If you come at him with an agenda of reconciliation-”

“He’ll see it a mile away and back off even further. I know,” she says unevenly. “Easier said than done, though.”

“Yes,” Hotch says quietly. “But the effort might be better for both of you in the long run. That’s all I wanted to say. I have no startling relationship insights to give you, as you well know…”

“Regardless,” she smiles sadly, thankful for his consideration. “I appreciate it. And that you just came out and said it. No bullshit. You know I’ve always liked that about you.”

There’s another pause. “Just reach out to them,” he says unexpectedly, but she knows exactly who he’s talking about. “You won’t fix anything by hiding away in that apartment. Don’t use your defense mechanisms against your friends.”

“They’re all so angry…”

“So what? When has that ever stopped you? And did you really think they wouldn’t be? Let them work through it. Just keep sticking your nose in and refuse to go away. I know you know how to do that.”

“Hotch,” A smile spreads across her quickly. “Are you calling me a bitch?”

“That’s your word, not mine.” His voice is warm again in return. “Do what you do best, Emily, and you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know why I like you so much.”

“Neither do I.” She can almost see his smile through the phone. “Gotta go. Give Casey a kiss for me…” 

And then he’s gone without a goodbye. It’s just so typically _Hotch_ , and she’s never been more grateful for a sliver of something mundane and expected in her life. He’s right – about everything – and now she feels confident about what she has to do. She’ll stick her nose in and she won’t give up.

She looks down at Casey on the floor as her daughter grins back at her, blowing bubbles through her mouth to ease the aches of teething. Emily smiles back; she’s got this. 

One heart conquered, five more to go…


	56. Chapter 56

Morgan: Thanks again for summarizing the book references in the Hodges case. Would’ve taken me days to do it.

Reid: Days? More like weeks, D.

Morgan: Why are you such a hater? I can READ, ya know…

Reid: Of course you can. We’re texting, after all. But you don’t do it as quickly, as accurately, or with as much insight as I do.

Morgan: Sometimes I have no idea why we’re friends >:/

Reid: It’s my irresistible personality and my smoldering good looks 

Morgan: LOL! You must be high right now…

Reid: NOW who’s the hater?

Morgan: Oh man, I miss you, Pretty Boy. Do you think you’ll come back to active case duty now EP’s home?

…

Reid: You don’t honestly expect Emily to become a stay at home mom, do you?

Morgan: I don’t know what to expect from you two. The current situation is kinda weird.

Reid: Weird?

Morgan: She left you & she lied. I know that tore you up. I sorta expected you to be angry with her now.

Reid: I am angry.

Morgan: She’s living with you, dude. That’s not “angry”.

Reid: Well… I’m not ONLY angry, I guess…

Morgan: *eyeroll* Obvious answer is obvious

Reid: She’s Casey’s mother, and she didn’t have a lot of options open to her. Was I supposed to toss her onto the street?

Reid: And why aren’t YOU angry with her?

Morgan: I am, man, but we’re workin’ it out.

Reid: “Working it out”?????

Morgan: Yeah. You know, she & I are friends for a reason. And she’s stubborn as hell. She sorta got all up in my face & I yelled at her for a while & she sat through it with this damned diplomatic patience and Casey bouncing on her knee…

Reid: Casey?

Morgan: Yeah. She’s reaching out to all of us – the whole team. Using your kid like a broadsword.

Reid: BROADSWORD?

Morgan: A broadsword of cuteness. None of us can resist Casey. You know that.

Reid: huh. wow.

Morgan: Listen, man, I love ya & I got yer back no matter what. I ain’t betrayin’ my skinny, nerd-brother, & I let her know JUST how much I hate what she did to you, S.

Reid: I’m not doubting your friend credentials, Derek

Morgan: Well, she’s a friend too. She listened to me & took it in. I respect that. Then it was my turn to listen. I can’t say I agree with her choices, but I think I understand them a little better now. 

Morgan: So, we’re workin’ it out. Slowly.

Morgan: You cool with that?

Reid: Of course I am. I don’t want her to be unhappy.

Morgan: Well then, I guess you two better figure out your arrangement.

Reid: ????

Morgan: *eyeroll*

Reid: What?

Morgan: She still loves you. Hard. I mean, you can see that shit from space.

…

Reid: I know

Morgan: Well, if you don’t love her, you gotta say something. Ain’t right to give her false hope. Aaaaannnnnnnd THAT’S where your situation gets weird…

Reid: I don’t know… I don’t know how I feel.

Morgan: No shit. Maybe she should move out until you get yer head straight about this.

Reid: She needs help with her injuries

Morgan: Bullshit. She’s already toting Casey all over D.C.

Reid: Casey needs her around.

Morgan: YOU need her around. You don’t want to lose her again. I get it. But you see how that sends a mixed message, don’t you? Be fair, man. Let her know where yer head + heart’s at.

…

Morgan: I’m not tellin’ you anything you don’t already know, kid. If you expect honesty from her, you gotta give it in return. Ya feel me?

Reid: Yes, I do.

Morgan: I’m not sayin’ forgive her or anything. I dunno what the right move is here. But she came back after all the shit she’s pulled, and that takes balls. She’s decided to face the music with you, for whatever that’s worth.

…  
…

Morgan: Oh man, I overstepped, didn’t I? Shit.

Reid: No. No, we’re fine, Derek. I get what you mean and I appreciate you saying it. It’s just hard to hear. That’s all.

…

Morgan: Your love can be seen from space too, ya know

Reid: *sigh* I never thought this would be so hard

Morgan: Welcome to the human race. Nothing comes easily & then ya gotta fight like hell to keep it.

…

Reid: So, you’re going to forgive her?

Morgan: Maybe.  
Probably.  
Eventually.  
But that’s just me. It doesn’t mean shit to anyone else.   
And, ya know, she’s got that WAY about her… Casey didn’t get all her winning personality from you…

Reid: Prentiss magic. I know it well.

Morgan: Yep

Morgan: Listen, even if she makes good with everyone else, that doesn’t mean anything for you guys. No matter what you decide – forgiveness or not – the team will support it. You & Emily have always been yer own thing. I don’t see that changing no matter how this works out. You’ll find yer own way.

…

Reid: No judgment? No matter what I decide?

Morgan: Never, brother.

Reid: Thanks, D.

Morgan: Always.  
Wanna get a drink sometime this week? I’m feeling nerd-deficient.

Reid: Okay, but no sports bars. I want a place that serves brandy.

Morgan: Fine, whatever, Grandma. Gonna get you wasted & talk you into coming back to knock down doors with me in the field.

Reid: You have an erroneously rosy view of my physicality. Libraries and classrooms are my safe zones.

Morgan: Nothing safe about being FBI, Wonder Boy. Besides, I’ve seen you Hulk out in defense of yer woman. You can throw a punch better than most. Start training with me again & I’ll make you into Georges St-Pierre in no time ;)

Reid: I don’t know who that is, but I suspect hyperbole. I’m not returning to the field. I’m not Hulking out on anyone, no matter how much alcohol you ply me with.

Morgan: We’ll see ;) I think your expectations in general are about to do a 180 on you, so I’m indulging in my fantasy & you can’t stop me.

Reid: ???

Morgan: HAHAHA! I’ll let yer supercharged brain work that one over for a while.   
Text you later with a time & place.

Reid: You’re terrible. I dislike you.

Morgan: Love you too, brother ;)


	57. Chapter 57

She’s having nightmares. She doesn’t say anything to him, but he hears her distantly from the living room. It’s not every night, and sometimes they only last a few minutes, but he finds himself listening for them, and then being frozen on the sofa, paralyzed by his indecision about how to react. Each time he hears her cry out he wants to go to her, wake her, ask her to talk her way through it because he knows that’s the best way to get past them. But it feels too intimate. Certainly, the way he reacts when she struggles is too close, too personal, too _emotional_. He doesn’t know how to help her and keep her at a distance, and it feels like he’s failing somehow.

Tonight, she only cries out once. It’s not words or a name, it’s just an animal noise of terror and that frightens him more than anything. He’s on his feet before he can think about it, sliding across the wooden floors as quietly as he can. When the doorway comes into view, door ajar just enough to see a slice of the room beyond, she’s up, sitting with her back to him, legs tangled in the sheets and half off the bed as if she’s going to get up. He notices her hair first because it’s a mess and she’s always so careful with her appearance even when half asleep. Her tangles are vibrating enough for him to see it from a distance. She’s shaking. Violently. He swallows hard, pulse suddenly jackrabbiting in his throat as if _he’s_ the one who’s afraid. His body’s screaming at him to go to her, help her, but he doesn’t. He just stares in horrified silence as her shaking slowly stills and her body sags with relief at the passing storm. Then he stalks away before she notices him, irrationally angry and eyes pricking as he slouches back onto the sofa and hates them both for the distance that now lives between them.

She has three more nightmares that week and he watches them all from his self-imposed boundary of the door, helpless and obligated and resentful in equal measure as she fights against her mind alone.

He wonders when he turned into this person who can watch a friend suffer and do _nothing._ The self-protection instinct is so strong, but he never imagined it would trump _who he is._ Standing there, refusing to act, feels evil to him, and he hates it. He struggles with himself and actively questions the value of his choices, but in the end, it changes nothing. The weeks continue to pass and he continues watching.

During daylight, they are improving. Emily is settling into this new reality, spending her time reconnecting with Casey and her friends, working on her physio regimen, and trying to be gentle with him. She’s stopped pushing, ceased trying to launch conversations about the big, heavy hurt between them that he doesn’t want to deal with. It’s helpful, to a point. He can go to work and worry less about Casey knowing she’s with her mother, and there’s a fragile sense of expectation that grows in his chest at the end of each day knowing that he’ll be going home to a place that’s lit and warm and active. He’s becoming used to moving around her in the apartment once more, and it feels natural – easy – even though they are living _separately_ together.

But this strange, non-confrontational dance they are doing means that they’ll never get beyond this point. He’s not in denial so deeply that he doesn’t see that the only way back to one another is _through_ the big, heavy hurt he’s afraid of facing. And his nighttime paralysis is just another symptom of that. Things cannot continue this way, and because of the dynamic he’s silently agreed to, he knows the only one who can change it is him.

So, as Halloween draws closer, and Emily’s nightmares become more frequent, he becomes more and more agitated about his inertia.

This night, he stands outside the doorway and listens to her moan. It’s different this time; she sounds like she’s dying, and he finds himself gasping at the noise without being able to see her. He _knows_ she’s all right – she’s just dreaming – but his imagination paints her in his bed, blood-soaked and fading while he stands behind a door too afraid to walk through and help. Suddenly he becomes enraged. _Fuck you, Emily, for turning me into this… coward._ And just as suddenly, his mind clears and gets very quiet on him.

_Did she really do this to you? Remember, she’s always told you that you have a mighty heart… Where did that go?_

He thinks about the friend he misses, the girl under the tree. If Emily were still _her_ and nothing more, he wouldn’t hesitate. And then that becomes the answer. His mind separates that girl from the big, heavy hurt and his hand grasps the doorknob and his legs carry him through the doorway without doubt.

Emily’s tied up in the sheets of a bed that’s too big for one person. Sweat dapples her hairline and her face is creased in muted pain, lost inside her head and miles away from anyone. He walks around until he’s at her side, next to the nightstand. His hand hovers over her arm but he can’t make it land anywhere. He clears his throat instead.

“Emily.”

She continues twisting, tossing her head along the mess of pillows, whimpering.

“Emily,” he says more forcefully, but still shy of scaring her.

Her eyelids flicker, opening briefly, unfocused and hazy as she turns in the bed before they slip closed once more. He’s about to call out again when her hand knocks into his hovering over her. Her fingers clasp his arm for an instant and then slide away.

“Spence…” she mumbles wetly without opening her eyes. His name is grief-soaked and raw, and it makes his chest constrict so sharply that he can barely catch his breath. She’s not awake – she never would’ve let him see this if she were – not with things between them as they are now. It’s only then he realizes everything she’s holding back to make this situation work, and it reflects everything he’s fighting in himself.

_We’re both cowards._

She settles after that, falling into a silent, deeper sleep with lines still creasing her brow. He stands over her for who knows how long, watching, questioning. But the dream seems to be banished for the evening, so when his muscles begin to complain that he’s been in the same position too long, he turns and walks out of the room. He lays himself down on the sofa but doesn’t sleep at all, watching the light across the ceiling change from blues to reds to golds instead.

\----- 

She pops into the kitchen in a flurry of distraction while he tries, in vain, to get Casey to eat more Cheerios than she throws.

“Why did you let me sleep so late?” she huffs as she breezes past them to the coffee pot. It’s not even six thirty yet. He hides a smile and then Casey whacks him with a well-aimed Cheerio right between the eyes.

“Ow, Casey,” he scolds, but it barely makes a difference over the maniacal giggling. “It’s _food_ , not a weapon.”

“Says you,” Emily mumbles as she takes her first slurp of coffee. Then she sails over and grabs a handful of Cheerios from Casey’s tray and stuffs them in her mouth, making crazy noises of enjoyment that stops the giggling in its tracks. “Oh…. So good. Cheerios are the best food in the entire _world_. If Casey doesn’t want them, I’ll eat them ALL.”

Emily makes a grab for more Cheerios and Casey screams defiantly, trying to protect her breakfast with tiny hands and a look of extreme pique. “Mama, NO! Casey Os!”

“Oh really?” Emily leans down to face her daughter. “’Cause you aren’t eating them, squirt…”

“Casey OOOOOOOOOsssss!” Casey yells as her face gets red.

“Alright, alright, calm down girls…” Reid tries to soothe while casting a glance at Emily over his shoulder. “I’m not sure making her territorial about food is a great idea.”

Emily smirks. “She’s eating, isn’t she?”

There is no doubt that Casey is now wolfing down her Cheerios while keeping a watchful eye on her mother. Reid takes the opportunity to pick breakfast out of his hair.

“Sleep okay?” He watches her.

“Sure. Except you let me sleep in. Why did you do that?” She doesn’t appear to be lying. Maybe she doesn’t remember…

“Got somewhere important to be?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “You know I don’t but… I’m trying to do my fair share with Casey. To earn my keep.”

He blinks at the term. Does she think she has to offer something in exchange for spending time with Casey? With him?

“I usually do breakfast,” she adds.

“I can feed her before work. It’s no problem.”

She gives him a gentle smile that makes his stomach flutter a little. Then she leans in and picks a Cheerio out of his hair and pops it in her mouth. “Of course you can. But I like doing it.”

He clears his throat and quickly looks away, trying to stifle the sudden warmth he feels. He wrestles his thoughts back to the original topic.

“I thought this morning you might need some extra sleep.”

“Why?”

He looks at her and the question is genuine. She doesn’t remember.

“You were talking in your sleep last night.” He watches her for a reaction. She blinks a few times as a blush rises in her, but she doesn’t look away from him.

“Oh. Sorry. I must have been loud if you heard me from the living room…”

He shrugs. “I was up already.”

“Well… I’ll try and keep it down from now on.”

He stares at her critically and her eyes widen under his glare. “You’re not a guest here, you know. You don’t have to behave all the time…” he grumbles.

“Uh…” is all she can manage, her eyes blinking as if she’s trying to figure out a foreign language quickly.

“I’m just saying…” he takes a deep breath and moderates his tone a bit. “You don’t have to be proper. This is your home too – you shouldn’t have to put on a show. You should be _you_ , even if it’s unpleasant.”

She waits half a minute before answering, staring at him as if she doesn’t recognize him at all. “I have no idea what you want me to say, Spencer,” she says quietly. 

He sighs and slouches as Casey beans him with another Cheerio. Perhaps Morgan was right: he sends out a lot of weird messages…

“I don’t want you to say anything you don’t feel comfortable with,” he gives in. Coward. “Forget it. I probably just need another cup of coffee before I start making sense today.”

He feels her move away and he turns back to Casey and her mushy, Cheerios-stuffed smile instead. He sets his mind to cleaning his daughter up, and then organizes his tasks in his head by order of importance. When her hand lands on his shoulder, he twitches, but she keeps it there until he turns to face her. She holds a travel mug out to him and tries for a smile. She _is_ trying, despite everything.

“Here. Some clarity to go.”

He takes the mug and offers a smile of his own. Maybe he’s being too rigid. Maybe it doesn’t have to be all or nothing?

“Spence, if I’m doing something that bothers you, you need to say so,” she offers quietly, eyes wary.

He sighs loudly. “That’s not what I was-”

“I know,” she interrupts. “But I’m trying to do things right.”

He stands quickly and turns to face her. “I don’t _care_ if you do things right, Emily. This isn’t a test. We used to get things wrong all the time. Remember? We just… worked it out. Maybe we need to get back to that.”

“But…” She looks genuinely confused now. “You avoid anything unpleasant…”

“I know. And you avoid provoking me, so we’re busy being ‘nice’ all the time. And that just isn’t us.”

“So… you want us to fight more?”

“I don’t know,” he huffs. “I want us to be how we’re going to be, I guess.”

She opens her mouth to respond, and then shuts it quickly with a definite click. He watches it happen and thinks, _‘discretion is the better part of valor’_ , and decides to drop the topic for now.

“We’ve got a briefing at eight. I really oughta get a move on.”

“Sure,” she nods, closing off again. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yeah. I’ll call if I’m going to be late.” He holds his travel mug and watches her, but they end up staring at each other and it achieves nothing. He turns, gives Casey a series of loud, wet kisses, and then gets out of the apartment as quickly as he can without running.

He marches down the stairs to street level and every reluctant step echoes ‘Coward’ off the walls as he goes.

\----- 

When he comes home that night, it’s as if the morning never happened and he sinks even further into his head. Emily excuses herself early, perhaps trying to avoid him, and it isn’t long before he hears her calling out from the bedroom. But this time, anger and frustration fuel him, and he strides to the doorway, and then through it without hesitation.

It’s dark and he hates that, but maybe it’ll make things easier. He rounds to her side of the bed where she’s twisting and mumbling. He watches her for a moment and then slides to the floor bracing his back against the mattress.

“Emily,” he calls out, but she doesn’t react. He says her name again but this time reaches out for her hand that’s closest to him. The contact wakes her as if she’s been electrocuted and she almost crashes into him as she flails around.

“It’s me, Em.”

He stays where he is on the floor, fingers still curled around her wrist. He can’t see her but hears her gasping in the dark trying to get control over herself.

“I’m right here,” he murmurs, and a minute later she flops back into the mattress with a wet huff. She doesn’t pull her arm away but she doesn’t answer him either. He’s right though: the darkness makes it easier. “You don’t have to tell me anything, but I’m staying here until you drift off again.”

There are a couple of minutes of nothing but the two of them breathing in the dark. Then her body turns, rolling to the side of the bed closest to him.

“Why?” she whispers.

He shrugs even though she can’t see it. “Everything’s scarier at night. But it’s not real. It’s just our minds running unchecked. We make our fears worse than they are.”

Reid thinks about Jack sleeping next to him in a strange place, and smiles. “It’s better if you’re not alone. You’ll see.”

“How long have you known?”

“A while.” He sighs. “I should’ve done this sooner. I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything, but after another bout of silence she twists her arm, slipping free of his grip and replacing it with her fingers, curled and sheltered in his along the ridge of the mattress.

He sits until his butt gets numb from the floorboards. He’s certain she’s asleep again when she finally speaks.

“It’s about me dying. Every time,” she whispers. “It’s cold and dark and I’m completely alone. That’s it. You’d think it’d be something worse… but that’s all it takes, I guess.”

His fingers tighten on hers as his heart clenches in his chest. The only way to better is _through_ the heavy hurt…

“You’re never alone, Em. No matter what your brain tells you. Not anymore.”

And he proves it by sitting next to her bed for the rest of the night.


	58. Chapter 58

Reid: Remember she’s a sucker for stories. She’ll clam up for hours and listen. Well, ok, maybe minutes…

Reid: But don’t let her watch too much TV. I’m trying to cultivate her imagination.

…

Reid: Music works too. The Beatles seem to be her current favorite but anything British New Wave will do. Don’t use Bowie. That’s gets her all worked up for some reason.

Prentiss: Are you done yet?

Reid: Done?

Prentiss: This isn’t my first day at being a mom, Spencer.

Reid: But it’s my first away case since she was born.

Prentiss: You’re in BALTIMORE. It’s a 2-hour drive.

Reid: But I have no idea how long this case will be.

Prentiss: We’ll manage ;) Just go do your thing – I’m sure you’ve missed it a little.

Reid: I think Morgan’s the one who’s missed it. Can’t believe he talked me into this.

Reid: You’re sure you’re fine? I don’t want you feeling overwhelmed. You’re still healing. Remember that Elizabeth is at your disposal – it won’t be an imposition.

Prentiss: You’re helicoptering, Spence. Go catch a bad guy & put that energy to good use. We’re okay. She’s napping like a champion.

Reid: Don’t let her sleep too much

Prentiss: GOODBYE, SPENCER.

Reid: Sorry. Yes. You’ll be fine. 

Reid: I can come back if there’s a problem. Just call.

Reid: But there won’t be a problem and I’ll be back soon.

…

Reid: Promise me you’ll call Elizabeth if you need help

Prentiss: Speeeeeenceeeeeer…

Reid: Okay, okay. You two have fun. Kiss her for me.

Prentiss: :) Good luck with the case. Keep me updated.

Reid: Will do. Thanks, Emily.

 

Emily puts her phone down. “Right. One clingy kid soothed, one to go.” She turns to Casey standing in her crib, red-faced and bawling as her little hands shake the bars in frustration. She’s been crying for forty minutes straight. “Oh, honey, you’ve gotta give in to sleep eventually…”

“Da-dee!” Casey wails. “Da-deeeeeeee!”

“I know, that was Daddy on the phone. He’s on a trip for a little while but it won’t be long before he’s back. He wants you to be good, little bird…”

“DA-DEEEEE!” Casey shakes the crib bars angrily, crying like she’ll never be happy again. It breaks Emily’s heart. Forget torture; listening to her child cry can unravel her in less than an hour.

“Okay, okay, okay…” she gasps as she scoops Casey up out of the crib and against her. Casey fights a little, wanting to be free, but then sags into Emily’s chest, sobbing for her father and curling her fingers into Emily’s shirt.

“Da-dadee…” she hiccups brokenly.

“Yeah, I get it, baby. I notice when he’s gone too. But he always comes back, love. He’d never leave you…” Emily bounces Casey gently as she walks to the living room. She thinks about the nights she’s awoken to find Reid sitting next to her bed, seeing her through another nightmare, and she begins to think that _maybe_ he’d never leave her either.

_You’re never alone, Em… Not anymore._

Emily sighs at the warm feeling the thought arouses, telling herself that empathy isn’t the same as _love_. Though she’s grateful for what he’s offered – blown away by it, really.

“Mu-ma?” Casey looks up at the noise, eyes swollen from crying, and chest hitching from the sobs that seem to be dying out due to fatigue more than comfort. Emily brushes her daughter’s tears away gently and smiles.

“He hasn’t been away from you ever,” she whispers. “This must feel really strange, huh?” Then she wonders how Casey would react if Emily disappeared from her life again. Would she cry and fuss to exhaustion like she did for Reid? Or would it just seem _familiar_ to her? Emily chokes a little when she considers the answer. “Feels strange for me too. Just got used to him being around again…”

She’s rambling, thinking about the odd pull in the center of her when he’s not there. It happens with Casey as well, but these sensations are _new_ \- they didn’t happen when she was away chasing Doyle. She ached for the loss of her family, sure, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it, to sink down in it and explore the hurt for what it really meant to her. Now she has all the time in the world and her mind spools out terrible scenarios that makes her breath catch in her throat and her eyes burn at the possibilities. It’s completely useless – this delayed grief – but somedays it paralyzes her and she can’t get free.

She shakes the thoughts away as they both sink into the couch, Casey shuffling against Emily to get comfortable. “What about a story, huh?” she asks, and Casey mewls in a tired way. “How about _The Owl and The Pussy Cat_?”

Casey snuggles down and pops her thumb in her mouth as Emily tells the story of the unlikely star-crossed lovers from memory. When she reaches the ‘happily ever after’ there’s only the sound of Casey’s soft sucking and the whispered whoosh of traffic outside on the street below. Emily sighs contentedly; she never imagined that something this simple would seem so peaceful to her. Telling a nursery rhyme to a sleepy child in a pokey, cramped apartment…

“I like that one,” she murmurs into Casey’s hair, leaving a tiny kiss as she goes. “It’s Daddy’s favorite too.”

That is a mistake. At the mention of her father, Casey gets a second wind, whining out a cry that gradually gets louder and more heartbroken.

“Daaaaaaaa- deeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

The tears begin again, as does the angry squirming and the inconsolable rage at being denied the one thing that will comfort her. Emily rolls her eyes skyward and blinks away the glassiness and frustration at being unable to solve this problem. Casey gets under her defenses and is _ruthless_ in her torture…

“Oh, c’mon, Case… be reasonable…”

The crying just escalates to howling. One of the neighbors starts banging on the wall, which strikes Emily as insensitive and unhelpful. As well as goddamned rude. The spurt of rage propels her to action. She stands and pops Casey on her hip while fumbling for her phone as Casey arches and contorts in her displeasure.

“Fine,” Emily grumbles wetly, and then speed dials a number with reluctance. God knows how _this_ will go over. “Time to pull out the big guns…”

The call connects just as Casey wails at ear-splitting volume. Emily winces and keeps bouncing her, as useless as that is.

“Hey. Hi. So, as you can hear, I sorta have a situation on my hands, and…”

Casey keens loud enough so that Emily isn’t even sure she’s being heard over it.

“I’m calling for help, okay? And it would be super if that could happen with a minimum of judgment about my parenting skills.”

There’s a pause in the racket while Casey sucks in a huge breath for another assault, but it’s long enough for Emily to get the answer she needs. She sags a little in unexpected relief.

“Okay. Thanks, Mom. See you soon.”

The cavalry is on its way.

\----- 

It turns out that Elizabeth Prentiss is much more than _‘the big guns’._ She’s the all-out nuclear assault on cranky Casey behavior. Ah-ma is in the apartment for under a minute before Casey submits and calms, curled up in the Ambassador’s arms. Emily is hurt and insulted, but also immensely relieved that both her daughter and the asshole next door have finally shut up. Elizabeth watches Emily cautiously from her corner of the couch with Casey sagging against her, eyelids drooping.

“You have a way with her,” Emily concedes resentfully, while trying not to telegraph that resentment on.

Elizabeth shakes her head and smiles knowingly. “Don’t do that, Emily. Don’t turn this into some sort of competition. She knows me, that’s all.”

“She knows me too.”

“She’s stayed with me a lot over the past several months. Whenever Spencer needed a break. She expects me to be there when he’s gone. Children have routines that offer them comfort just like everyone else. She’ll develop routines with you as well. It’ll just take time.”

Emily blinks and looks up at her mother. “Spencer needed breaks?” He’s been so fussy about Casey. Emily just assumes that he’s having a hard time letting go because _he hasn’t let go_ in over a year.

Elizabeth sighs and strokes out Casey’s tangles with soft adoration that makes Emily’s heart flutter; she’s never seen her mother this gentle before and it looks beautiful on her. “He was… overwhelmed, Emily.”

“Well, sure. Of course…”

“No,” Elizabeth fixes her with a serious glare. “Not the way you think. I’m not sure what I should say about this… He _battled_ between being a single parent and grieving for you. Some days… the grieving consumed all his focus. Emily, he thought you were dead. It shut him down completely.”

Emily just watches her mother in silence, heart crashing around in her chest and face heating with exposure. She’s not sure if her mother is condemning her somehow – she’s too compromised by what she’s just said to be sure. And Elizabeth doesn’t give her intentions away at all, just like always.

“He rarely discussed it. He’d call me up and manage to get his request out, but that was all he could do at times.” Elizabeth leans back further into the couch, as if the weight of what she’s saying is beating her back. “I don’t have anything to compare it to, but his devastation was frightening to witness. I believe, if it hadn’t been for Casey…”

Elizabeth flicks her gaze away, not finishing her thought, which is far more impactful than if she had. Emily just blinks and breathes through it. Dead. He thought she was dead. For how long? From the moment she left? Did he have any hope at all she’d return? That was the difference between them: she _knew_ he was alive, and she intended to come home again if she could.

“At the risk of getting into things that are none of my concern,” Elizabeth murmurs after a discreet break, drawing Emily’s gaze back to her. “How are things going between you two now?”

Emily swallows hard as a new blush flames her cheeks. “Okay,” she shrugs. “I mean… we don’t fight or anything.”

“But…”

“But what, Mom?”

Elizabeth sighs. “Why are you always so defensive, dear? I’m on your side.”

“Are you?”

“Of course. I’m on your side, and Spencer’s side, and Casey’s. You are all family, and I love you all, individually and collectively.”

Emily is blown away by that for a moment and watches as Elizabeth cuddles Casey, who’s now asleep and drooling on her Grandmother’s expensive blouse.

“You… love us?” she stumbles.

Elizabeth nods and looks at her in a tired way, as if this is all obvious and has been for years. “I made you, Emily. We are a part of each other. The way you love Casey is the way I love you. It always has been no matter what happened to us along the way. I’ve made missteps with you – been too hard when I should’ve been softer – but I have a second chance with you now.” Her hands tighten around her granddaughter. “I will _try_ , dear. That’s all any of us can do. No one is blameless in this life – we’ll all make mistakes. But no matter the distance between us, I’ve never been anything less than proud of you. You are the kindest, most formidable woman I know, and that’s a tough combination to steer through life.”

Emily’s gaze gets blurry as the lights in the living room seem too bright and the air too thick and hot in her lungs while her mother quietly lowers the bridge between them. A tiny, forgotten part of Emily swells under her mother’s praise, like a bedraggled plant suddenly placed in the light again. She thinks it might be the same part of her that skips around the giant oak tree waiting for the boy in the striped shirt and glasses to show up and play…

“For all that’s happened, Emily, you’ve found someone who can’t do without you. I’d love Spencer for that reason alone – for treasuring you – but I find that I have affection for him on his own merits as well. And as for Casey, well…” Elizabeth smiles and cuddles her sleeping granddaughter.

“She’s magic,” Emily mumbles wetly through a smile of her own. Elizabeth nods.

“So, yes, I love you all, and I am patiently waiting to see if you two can get your acts together and back on track.”

Emily braces her forehead in her palm and sighs heavily. “It isn’t that simple, Mom.”

“Isn’t it? Perhaps my age makes me thinks that you are both dithering.”

Emily looks up, mouth falling open. “You were the one who told me to be patient. That I shouldn’t push…”

“That was months ago, Emily. I didn’t expect you to shift into neutral and idle for the foreseeable future,” Elizabeth tuts. “Besides, that’s not really you. Honestly, how have you managed living together without discussing anything? It’s not as if this hovel has space to hide…”

“Mother…” Emily warns, and Elizabeth shrugs it away.

“Emily, do or do not. Stop waiting for the mythical moment when he forgives you because it won’t happen. What was done cannot be undone. If neither of you can move past that, then it’s over. Period. But if he loves you the way I think he does-”

“He doesn’t love me, Mom,” Emily interrupts. Elizabeth gives her a critical look.

“You’re smarter than that, daughter. Tell him what you want. Be brave like you always have been. You’ll never get what you had back again, but you might still get each other. Remember, no one is blameless – making mistakes and moving on is what we do. Spencer should understand that, and if he doesn’t, you need to make him look at that.”

That effectively shuts the conversation down and drops them both into silence. Elizabeth, for her part, is unperturbed by it, rocking Casey with a small smile as the sofa creaks under her. Emily just watches, wondering if her mother was always like this and she’s simply misread her for the last twenty years. Finally, she thinks about what Elizabeth said about mistakes, and clears her throat.

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear,” Elizabeth looks up and offers her the same smile she has for Casey.

“Thank you,” Emily whispers. “For… being there for my daughter. For helping him. Thank you… for being patient with me.”

It’s Elizabeth’s turn to blink. She glances away and Emily swears that under her make-up, her mother’s cheeks become rosier. “There’s no need for thanks. I’d do anything for my family. Anything.”

Now the silence becomes awkward until Elizabeth finally straightens and looks back at Emily, under control once again.

“How long is he gone?” she asks. Emily shrugs.

“Depends on the case.”

“When did he leave?”

“This morning.”

“How many messages has he left so far?” Elizabeth smirks knowingly as Emily fishes out her phone.

“Twelve,” Emily grumbles as she reads the screen.

“Throw the kid a bone,” Elizabeth chuckles. It sounds completely alien coming from her. “Send him an update before he starts tearing chunks of his ridiculous hair loose.”

Emily can’t help but smirk as she thumbs out a text message. “His hair isn’t ridiculous, Mom…”

“Oh darling, you’re hardly impartial on that score. It’s clearly ludicrous. Trust me.”

 

Prentiss: All is well. Hanging out with Mom. No blood has been shed & we might have tea. TBD…

Reid: thumbs up!!!! :) 

 

“Well, that should hold him for the next fifteen minutes at least,” Emily sighs as she pockets her phone. Then she looks at her mother critically. “Would you like some tea?”

Elizabeth glances at Emily in shock, which quickly melts into something warmer and grateful. 

“Yes,” she murmurs. “I would enjoy that, thank you.”

Afternoon turns to evening as the Prentiss women commune in a pokey apartment, and it becomes yet another unexpectedly satisfying memory, with the traffic continuing to whoosh by outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to Edward Lear's [The Owl and The Pussy Cat](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43188/the-owl-and-the-pussy-cat), which is one of his best nonsense rhymes.


	59. Chapter 59

The Baltimore case takes three days, and things go so well that he’s convinced to try doing active field work on a case-by-case basis. Morgan drags him out for beer and congratulatory backslapping at the news. Hotch just gives him a small smile and mumbles, “Good”. Emily gives him a bigger smile and tells him she thinks it’ll be good for him, getting back into the full routine of work. He doesn’t tell any of them that his mind is back in his apartment half the time, and that he’s almost breathless when he bursts through the door and finds Emily and Casey watching reruns of _The Muppet Show_ with Aur on the couch. Casey squeals at the sight of him and Emily gives him a saucy “Hey, stranger” but it’s all so normal and prosaic and doesn’t match his manic desperation at all.

Who is he kidding? He swallows down his unreasonable reaction and smiles, but he’s tunnel-visioned on _losing._ Losing his home, his happiness… losing _her_ again. He thinks about her constantly, wonders what she thinks and feels now, and recognizes that it’s the same level of obsession he had before. The kind of obsession that makes the tattoo on his thigh itch in warning. The Doyle fiasco hasn’t dimmed any of it even if it has _twisted_ it so that he can’t allow himself to reconnect with her. And that’s where the real fear lies because if he can’t let her in, he _will_ lose her eventually. She won’t hang around for a lifetime of being polite with him… 

And as they try to make things work for Casey’s sake, and the thaw continues between them into something more like friendship, he can’t deny how comfortable he’s getting, how sometimes he slips up and almost instinctively reaches out for the _more_ they used to have. That instinct feels like seeking out oxygen. He realizes he wants that, not the half-light version he’s reluctantly demanded of them. But how can he ask when he still isn’t sure of her? How can he be a hypocrite when he told her he could never forgive her?

He drops his bags and slides down next to them on the couch with his heart hammering against his ribs. He knows he’s wearing a goofy smile that’s a direct result of the relief he feels upon seeing them again. Casey clambers all over him making strange meeping noises as Emily explains as his daughter’s take on Beaker the Muppet.

“She thinks he’s you,” she chuckles. “She keeps saying so. Must be the hair.”

“Meep-mee-meep, Dad-dee…” Casey chants as she tries to yank his hair for good measure.

Reid watches Emily and Casey laugh, and things slow down on him. His heartbeat settles, the pull behind his ribs eases, and his body just lets go. This is everything he wants and it’s useless denying it to himself.

_I don’t want to fight this anymore. There’s still love here. I have to find a way back._

He stares a moment longer, helplessly, and then covers it by pulling a crazy face and meeping along with Casey as he hugs her close and kisses her all over. Casey giggles and meeps louder, so that between her and Reid, the chorus of meeps rings off the walls and gets a little nuts.

“I don’t see the resemblance,” Emily guffaws over the ruckus, and Reid looks up at her and flaps his mouth while manically meeping at her as well. She loses it then and they’re all laughing until they can’t anymore, becoming a noodly mess of giggling humans strewn across the sofa.

“If I’m Beaker, does that make you Bunsen Honeydew?” he breezes when he can catch his breath, Casey playfully yanking his tie into a tight knot.

“Nah. I’m more of a Gonzo girl, really. All weird rat pals and love-struck chickens…” Emily smiles at him brilliantly, head lolling across the ridge of the sofa. “Besides, I don’t have a doctorate.”

“That’s true,” he grins back. “You should get one – they’re great. I have three.”

She laughs and holds her ribs like it hurts a little, but she doesn’t give up. His stomach flips because this moment feels like they’ve gone back in time, but they really haven’t. Maybe they could still get _to this…_

“But none of them can save you from the Beaker hair…” she says. Casey starts meeping again loudly and it makes Emily’s eyes go soft and warm as she watches them together. “We missed you,” she adds quietly and his stomach gets airborne. 

“I missed this too,” he says just as quietly knowing that his expression is serious when he does. Her smile fades and she watches him, waiting, but when he does nothing, she blinks and shrugs it off.

“Hungry?” she asks as she stands and turns away from him, smoothing her hair and straightening her clothes a little. _Putting her armor back in place,_ he thinks ruefully.

“A little,” he sighs and watches her go, Casey crawling all over him like a frantic earthworm. The moment slips away, but part of him whispers _‘there WAS a moment’_ and it buoys him a little. If he puts his mind to it, he knows he can figure a way out for them, and suddenly, it’s decided: that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

\---- 

The second away case is as successful as the first except for the door.

He slinks back into the apartment after landing late at the airstrip, and thinks he won’t have to deal with anything until tomorrow. But she’s curled on one corner of the couch waiting for him as he shuffles in with a huff.

“Hey, how was Detroit-”

She gets a good look at him as he stumbles into the lamp light and then she’s off the couch like a shot and rushing towards him.

“What the hell happened, Spence?! You look like you’ve used your face instead of the brakes! Why didn’t you call? Tell me you were injured-”

“I ran into a door,” he interrupts and tries to avoid her fingers brushing the massive bruise that’s swelling his eye shut and making his head pound. He’s also embarrassed and hopes the discoloration is hiding his blush from her. He’s an adult – he’s supposed to be capable. He frowns and she steps back giving him a critical glare.

“A door? Really? _That’s_ the excuse you’re going with? No one’s ever believed that…”

“It’s true though,” he tries to shuffle out of his jacket and winces when his head pings on him. He eventually flails himself free, hearing the fabric flop against the floorboards, and then lurches over to the sofa and sinks into it with a relieved grunt. “Morgan and I were breaching a house and he was on point. We’d cleared most of the rooms and I guess he was a little frustrated that we’d found nothing. He flung the last door open pretty fast. I guess he didn’t know how close I was standing beside him…”

Emily blinks for a few seconds and then bursts out laughing. And not polite laughter, but full, belly-rolling guffaws. Reid frowns at her, feeling hot and awkward, and then immediately regrets it when his head starts to ache.

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh no… trust me, it’s funny…” she cackles.

“It’s actually sorta humiliating,” he pouts to no effect. She keeps laughing. “You know, a _friend_ might recognize that this is both professionally and personally embarrassing, and provide me with some sympathy rather than laughing their ass off when I had to work ten hours with evidence of my own ineptitude swelling up on my face…”

She holds her belly and tries to calm down, eyes crinkled and warm as she looks at him. “Oh… oh, you’re right. Yes, of course. I’m sorry, babe…”

It takes her an instant to realize what she’s said and then she freezes in place, laughter dying in her throat suddenly. He can only see her through one eye as his head pounds and he waits on her breathlessly. 

_Babe._

Her gaze flicks around nervously, not knowing where to land, and then she pulls it all back into herself and clears her throat awkwardly.

“Sorry,” she mumbles again. “You’re okay otherwise though, right?”

He sighs loudly and heavily. “Nothing bruised but my stupid face and my ego.”

“It’s not a stupid face,” she says quietly as she circles the couch. “And it’s Morgan who didn’t check his peripherals, so he’s the one who’s stupid, not you. He’s on my list now – gonna have a talk with him about being a macho dumbass…”

Something warm threads through him as she says this, and he smiles even though his face complains about it. “Morgan feels terrible. He looked like a kicked puppy the entire flight home. I can probably milk this for free coffee for the next two months if I play my cards right. He was falling all over himself to make it up to me…”

“But not falling into a door, obviously.” She looks down at him and smirks. He smirks back and then twitches in pain. Her expression softens and so does her voice. “You take anything for it?”

He shakes his head, no, and she raises a hand to him. “I’m gonna get you one of my hot/cold packs. I don’t use them much anymore, but they really help. Hold on.”

She wanders to the kitchen and he allows himself to close his eyes and float in the relief of finally being home again. It almost dulls the thudding of his skull. When he senses her again, he must have been sleeping, because she’s sitting beside him and rousing him with a hand on his arm looking concerned. She hands him a warm pack, two Advil, and some tea to wash it down.

“Did you get checked for a concussion? You were really out there just now…” she murmurs worriedly, and that makes his heart throb as well as his head. He swallows the pills instead.

“It’s fine. It was just a door.” He sips his tea.

“It’s not fine. You have a history.” She makes him lean back and then gently applies the pack over his eye. Her fingers slide into his hair as she holds it there. “The bruising and swelling looks like you were doing fifty miles an hour when you ran into it. I’m not gonna have you risk your brain because Morgan doesn’t understand how a door works.”

He laughs quietly but she doesn’t. He raises a hand to hold the pack in place and his fingers brush hers as they switch places. Her hand falls to his shoulder and rests there as she watches him. 

“It’ll be fine, Emily. It wasn’t that bad. I’m sure that the altitude adjustments from the jet and the swelling make it seem worse than it really is. I’m just being a baby about it. It still gets under my skin that I can’t excel at anything physical…”

“Well, you won the race to the door all right…”

He grimaces as she gives him a sly smile. “Your compassion is boundless. How could I have forgotten?” he says dryly.

“Listen, you’ve always been a terrible judge of your capabilities.” Her hand tightens on his shoulder. “Over the years, the whole team has gotten to a place where we have zero doubts about going through doors with you. _Through them_ , mind you, not into them…”

“I sorta hate you right now. You can feel that, can’t you?”

She laughs at him – a real laugh – one that brightens every inch of her. The kind of laugh they used to share all the time. The kind that always mesmerized him.

“My point is: we have complete faith in you. You can do anything and we all know it. Today was just… stupid, that’s all. Stupid happens to everyone. We probably all have a door out there with our name on it.”

She thinks he can do _anything?_ He doesn’t know how to respond because he’s always thought that she left him behind because she _didn’t_ have enough faith in him. And he’s constantly depended on outside opinion on this subject because he knows his own is hopelessly warped by childhood neuroses. He finds himself staring, and perhaps it’s too long, because her face changes a few times, and it doesn’t make sense. There’s warmth, followed by tenderness, then memory, assurance, and finally something that strikes him as hesitantly skittish. He focuses harder, tries to lean up from the couch, but then she raises her hand from his shoulder and lets it hover above him. He stops, and she does too, her eyes flicking across his worriedly, and then she swallows as she drifts her fingers into his hairline again. They skim lightly through his tangles, tickling his scalp, and then she pulls them back to repeat it. He knows his mouth drops open a little as he watches her, but he says nothing, too lost in the simple comfort her fingers give him. He rolls his eyes shut and then just sighs, and her fingers keep skimming and brushing. He sags against the couch and the heat pack sags too as he relaxes down to his bones. Then he feels her other hand tighten over his fingers and readjust the pack over his eye.

“Keep it on,” she whispers, and he opens the one good eye to find her close. “At least for ten minutes.”

“Okay,” he whispers back. “Thank you.”

She shrugs the gratitude away and makes a strange noise. Then she pulls back and his instincts reach out once more.

“Why are you still up?”

She blinks as she turns back to him, then she rolls her shoulders.

“Bad dream?” he guesses. Her cheeks get rosy. He’s not the only one who gets embarrassed.

“No, not tonight. Things are improving on that front.”

“That’s good.”

“It is,” she nods without looking at him. “I just… knew you were coming back tonight so… I dunno. I stayed up.”

His one good eye is blinking so fast that she looks like stop-motion animation in glitches and jumps. Then he looks down and sees her hand flat against the sofa cushion between them and he has to fight the urge to reach for it. 

_I missed you too._

Neither of them say anything and they refuse to look at one another. It feels to him as though something important and fragile is getting twisted on them in the silence, and when she shifts her weight to leave, he starts to panic about it.

“You’re tired. I’ll let you rest-”

“Want to watch something?” he blurts, and is rewarded with a shocked look of hope from her when she turns back to him. “After what you said about a concussion… well, now you’ve got me thinking about it… maybe I shouldn’t sleep yet…”

“Uh, okay. Yeah. Sure.” She blinks and then plops back down onto the sofa looking confused. “Makes sense…”

“Yeah,” he nods to buy time. He’s gotten them here but now he doesn’t know how to proceed.

“W-what do you feel like seeing?” she says after a punishing silence of mutual indecision. Then he smiles because the answer he comes up with is perfect.

“Doctor Who?”

Emily rolls her eyes dramatically and sags into the cushions, tension draining from her almost immediately. “C’mon, really? Haven’t I done enough penance in the Tardis already, Spence?”

“There’s a whole new season you haven’t seen yet,” he grins widely. “I’ve got it PVR’d.”

“Of course, you do,” she mock-pouts and crosses her arms over her chest as she settles back. She hands him the remote control and he gives her a big, toothy grin even with a heat pack clamped over his face.

“This is gonna be great,” he enthuses as the flat screen flares to life. His headache is retreating into the background in favor of his giddy stomach and nervous delight.

“Ugh, I’m sorry I brought up the concussion thing,” she drawls, but when he looks over her mouth is curled into a smile as she stares ahead. “Well, let’s get to this before your brains start leaking out of your ears.”

It ends up being like old times between new people, as weird as that sounds. But Reid loves weird – he lives for it, really – and he comes to believe this particular snippet of weird is almost worth running into a door to achieve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's [a link to a Beaker and Bunsen Honeydew compilation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8Pm60MARvs) for those who are too young to have known the joy of _The Muppet Show_.


	60. Chapter 60

“Ugh! I feel like a beached whale…” Rossi declares from the living room in a slightly victimized tone.

“I should say so,” Elizabeth murmurs. “ _Three_ helpings of stuffing and potatoes? It’s a wonder you haven’t exploded, David.”

“Don’t treat me like a child, Liz,” he grumbles. “I’m old. I’ve earned the right to eat as many carbs as I want, no matter what-”

Rossi makes a terrible grunting noise and Casey squeals in delight at the same time, and then giggles like a fiend.

“Was the belly flop really necessary?” Rossi wheezes underneath the giggling.

“Apparently so,” Elizabeth soothes.

It all unfolds as Emily and Reid wash Thanksgiving dishes in the kitchen, but Emily gets a clear enough mental picture of her daughter slamming into a bloated Rossi sprawled out on the living room couch.

“Oh, Jesus,” she mumbles as she dries a plate, grin nearly splitting her face in two. Beside her, Reid’s shoulders are shaking as he washes, trying to keep the laughter to himself.

“That’s our girl,” he whispers warmly as he passes her another soapy plate. 

“I thought the food would’ve slowed her down a little,” she chuckles, fingers brushing his momentarily on the china by accident. He doesn’t react at all.

“Some of her favorite people are here. It’s too exciting for her,” he murmurs, a smile curling his lips as he scrubs a serving tray. “She’s gonna crash hard though, sooner or later.”

“I know.” 

Emily tries to work her head around where she is now. Six months ago she never would have imagined standing in this kitchen again doing dishes with Reid while her daughter charms the socks off both Rossi and _her mother._ She couldn’t picture another happy Thanksgiving or even a moment of domestic contentment like this one. And she certainly would never have imagined her mother in the middle of it. She sighs in satisfaction – it’s small but she’s learned that small moments are just as important as big ones – and reaches for another dish from Reid.

“You okay?” he murmurs, and she looks up to find him staring at her, soap dripping from his hands.

“Yeah,” she smiles back. “Today’s a good day. I still get surprised by good days, I guess, but… that’s fine. I’m _happy._ ”

He smiles back, a different smile than the one he just had for Casey. Somehow it seems private. “I’m happy too,” he murmurs, and turns back to the dishes in the sink. “I’m happy we could have this.”

Her pulse booms inside her suddenly as she watches his profile, then she turns back to her own hands and dish cloth telling herself to _stop it_ because she doesn’t need to ruin the moment with unrealistic expectations. She should be happy with what she has right now, and she is. 

She just wishes she could erase the echoes of _more_ that ripple through her, constantly reminding her that she was once much happier than this.

“Da-dee!” Casey yells from the living room.

“Do you need any help in there, dears?” Elizabeth calls out.

“I can send a small human-shaped bullet in if you like…” Rossi adds.

“We’re fine. We’ll be out soon,” Reid responds, then hands Emily a gravy boat, his fingers slipping across hers again. His tone is casual, eyes fixed on the next dish to be washed, but his fingers press into hers for an instant in a way that doesn’t feel accidental at all before slipping back to their task. She stares at him for a weightless moment, gravy boat dripping down her hands and onto the counter. _‘What are you doing?’_ she thinks loudly, but he just keeps washing. Eventually, she turns her attention to the gravy boat and dries it too vigorously.

“Ma?” Casey tries again.

“Be there soon, baby,” she croaks and then clears her throat. Her pulse is throbbing in her head, making it difficult to concentrate, but she pushes it back and focuses on the cupboards in front of her, placing her dried charges away in them. _Stop it. Stopitstopitstopitstopit…_

“I thought there’d be more to clean,” he mumbles conversationally, looking over the kitchen that seems surprisingly spotless in its post-Thanksgiving state. “I seem to remember that the last time, we used every dish, glass, pot and vessel we had. It felt like we’d never stop washing…”

She whips around to look at him. He’s talking about their first Thanksgiving, before they had Casey. It was just the two of them, but nevertheless it looked like a bomb exploded in the kitchen when they were done. She remembers that he complained bitterly about all the dishes, but that she cajoled him, telling him she’d make it worth his while. And when they finally finished, she dragged him to the bedroom by his gravy-stained tie and kept her word. She’s looking at the back of his head now as he surveys for dishes they’ve missed, and wonders _why_ he’s bringing it up. He speaks deliberately – always has – and she finds it hard to believe that he’s being random. He turns back to the sink and she snaps her head around to her task before he notices her gaze. Her skull is thumping and no matter how much she tells it to _‘cool it’_ , she can’t get herself to calm down. Then she gets angry because she _knows_ this is just wishful thinking on her part. He’s made no attempt to be anything more than friendly since she’s moved back in, and nothing he’s said or done in the meantime indicates he wants anything else from her.

_You’re being a stupid girl. He doesn’t want THAT. Men get tired of you – you know this – and you’ve given him good reasons to get tired of you, haven’t you? Don’t give him justification to pull back even more. You’ve made such progress so far. Being lovesick over a guy you can’t have doesn’t help anyone here. Be grateful for what you’ve got. Just stop it and grow the fuck up, idiot…_

The plates clatter loudly as she piles them into place a little too aggressively. She senses that he turns to look at her when she does it, and tries harder to seem in control. She leans up to put the carving platter away on an upper shelf when her body betrays her, side twinging in unexpected pain around the worst of her rib damage. She gasps and hitches, the platter hitting the edge of the shelf and bouncing out of her grip. But the shattering never happens as he’s suddenly next to her from hip to shoulder, one hand buttressing her side and the other safely clutching the plate. He’s warm and close, and it completely throws her off. She can’t remember the last time he did more than touch her hand.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” he mumbles softly, words brushing her cheek as he gently places the platter on the high shelf. His other hand is still on her side just above her hip. “The fractures are newly healed but they’ll be tender for a while yet.”

“So, I shouldn’t stretch, or reach, or do anything, is that what you’re suggesting?” she whispers unsteadily, wanting to lean into his hand as if he’s her only defense against gravity.

“Of course not,” he chuckles and then looks at her, not backing away an inch and _still_ holding her. “Just… give yourself a break.”

He’s so close that all she’d have to do is lean forward a few inches and she could brush his lips with hers. And every molecule of her wants that. He smells of rosemary, sage, and onions from the stuffing he made, and under that he smells like books and well-worn leather. His hair’s too long, and his eyes too focused. His sweater’s on the nappy side and his tie’s askew, like always. He forgot to shave today and the light fuzz outlines his sharp lines and square jaw. She finds herself looking at his lips and trying to remember _exactly_ what they feel like. He’d have no problem remembering, but the sensations are fading from her. She wants them back, more than she’s wanted just about anything. And he’s just inches away… She clamps down so hard on the impulse that it makes her wince a little. His eyes watch her and then his fingers move along her side, arm curved across her back.

“Does it still hurt that much?” he whispers, his fingers skimming in light circles over her blouse, meandering up to her ribs. She shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak.

_It’s not my ribs. It’s my heart._

He continues staring, not saying a thing. His fingers find her lowest rib and trace it carefully, almost as if he’s afraid the contact will re-break it. She can feel the dampness from his soapy hands bleed through her blouse but she doesn’t mention it or try to step away. She watches him watch her, and then to her shock, his eyes flick to her lips. 

_It’s not possible. He doesn’t want me. He said he could never forgive me._

Her pulse feels like it’s cracking through her bones – he must feel it with his arm curled around her. She holds her breath and refuses to move. It can’t be her who decides this – it has to be him. But it won’t happen. It _won’t._

He leans in so slowly it doesn’t feel real, and he gently knocks his forehead against hers and just _breathes_ out in a long, uneven way. His eyes close but she can’t look away, paralyzed by what’s happening. His hand grips her side more comfortably and he just exists there, eyes closed, leaning in and holding her. He shifts after a moment and his nose brushes hers. His eyes flick open then to find her staring, and he holds her gaze, lines easing at the corners as he seems to soften all over. She wants to ask him what he wants. She’ll give him anything, all he has to do is ask her…

“What’s taking you guys so long?” Rossi’s voice booms from behind them. “Dishes can wa- Oh…”

Reid’s arm falls away immediately and he steps back to the sink like nothing’s happened. Emily’s hollowed out by the sudden loss of all of it. She thinks she might drop to the floor for real because of it.

“Sorry,” Rossi mumbles, and when she looks back at him in the doorway, his eyes are flicking around apologetically.

“Uhh…” is all she can manage. She’s shaky and conflicted and angry and aroused, and her whole body is pulsing with her insane heartbeat. She grabs the counter top to steady herself, and Reid turns to look at Rossi. His cheeks are rosy but otherwise he’s calm.

“Would you like some coffee, Dave? I was about to make some.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Rossi stumbles and then looks to Emily for insight. “That’d be great.”

“Alright,” Reid heads to the coffeemaker, turning his back on both of them. “Ask Elizabeth if she’d like some, would you?”

“Yeah, yeah…” Rossi looks confusedly at Emily. She can’t help him at all and just sighs and shrugs back. He gives her another apologetic glance and lopes back to the living room. She turns to face Reid’s back and _waits._

“Why don’t you check to see that Casey isn’t driving them both crazy?” he murmurs over his shoulder. “I can finish up here. Be out in a minute.”

He sounds like the guy who’s been politely distant for the last few months. Not the one who was holding her a minute before as if he couldn’t bear the separation any longer.

“I… I can help,” she fumbles.

“It’s fine, really. I’ve got this. Go on…” 

He doesn’t look at her, and her heart and guts plummet to the floor in a hot, messy pile of rejection. It’s obviously a mistake he doesn’t want to address. He’s being polite, he’s trying to dismiss it. He’s happy with the way things are. Didn’t he just say that?

She can’t find the air or the energy to say anything, so she doesn’t, just fixing a pleasant expression to her face instead and heading into the living room to find out who wants what to drink.

 

She sits through coffee and conversation and Casey’s excited post-dinner exuberance until her daughter’s expected crash happens and it’s time for bed. Casey fights it, crying and making a fuss to stay with her grandmother and uncle, but Emily welcomes the distraction. She totes her into the nursery, wipes her tears, soothes her crying, and spends too long changing her into her pjs and getting her to settle in her crib. Emily turns her brain off, getting lost in the apparent misery of toddler bedtime instead, which is a problem, she tells herself, that she can actually solve. It’s forever before Casey quietens, her eyelids drooping as she fights sleep and her little chest hiccupping with cries she doesn’t have the energy to sustain any longer. Emily waits until she drifts off, gently brushing her tangles from her face and watching in silence. She decides it _really_ is a tremendous thing to have this opportunity – to raise her child in harmony with Reid. She should be grateful. The thing that’s stopping her is _her._ She stares down at Casey and makes a decision. It’ll be difficult, but best for all of them, she’s sure.

She sighs and leaves the nursery only to discover that her mother and Rossi are gone. The living room has been dimmed to a couple of table lamps and nothing more. She looks around for Reid, but hears him first.

“Finally asleep?” he asks casually, walking towards her from one of his enormous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a weighty tome in his hands. He’s already made up the couch with his sheets and pillows, just like every night. Her guts shrink away again and her decision solidifies in her, though she’s not sure she’s up to telling him about it tonight. Maybe sleep on it…

“Yeah, she’s exhausted. Me too.”

He nods, looking at her in the dimness and then _not_ , like a stranger in the street who’s made eye contact by accident. He slouches down into the couch with a sigh, not dismissing her, more like waiting for her to comment. But she won’t do that. It’s not her place.

“Okay, well… goodnight, Spencer.” She turns and heads for the bedroom, eyes pricking annoyingly.

“Today really was good,” his voice follows her. She looks back at him on the couch, half-shadowed in lamp light. His book is already open across his lap, a finger pressing onto a page, but he’s sitting forward as if he’s more interested in what he’s saying. “Having our family together, you know?”

And suddenly she gets it. The kitchen thing was gratitude, _relief_ at being able to pull everything off amicably. It’s similar to her gratitude for being alive and here to be a mother to Casey. Nothing more than that. Family’s always been important to him; it probably caused him incredible anxiety when he was unsure how this would all work out. But now he’s not – they can manage this in a friendly way, and _that’s why_ he’s happy. Her chest constricts sharply at the realization, and she’s grateful she’s in the shadows. She remembers what her mother said about mistakes and moving on. Maybe this is all the ‘moving on’ he’s capable of.

“Yes,” she mumbles to cover her unevenness. “It was. A good day, like I said.”

“With more to come maybe,” he says, and she knows by his tone that he’s smiling even if she can’t see it. Something in her quietly breaks, and it no longer seems important to put off her decision. It’s the way forward and he’ll see that. She’ll learn to be fine with it in time.

“I… Spencer…” She watches him sit up and pay greater attention to her. “I think… it might be time for me to get my own place.”

He goes completely still in the lamp’s shadows for a moment, and then carefully closes his book and places it on the coffee table in front of him.

“I see.” His face isn’t lit and she can’t read him from his voice, which is even and quiet. “May I ask why?”

“You know why,” she murmurs, begging him to accept or encourage this instead of questioning it.

“I don’t. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.” His head snaps up to face her, still in shadow. “Is it because of what happened in the kitchen? You said you were happy…”

“I _am_ happy, Spencer. To a point. I’m happy to be alive, happy to be back, happy to be Casey’s mom again.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“Spence…” she sighs in exasperation. _Why_ is he being like this?

“Casey’s just adjusted to having both of us around again. And now you want to move out?”

“It’s a one bedroom apartment, Spencer.”

“There’s plenty of room.”

“You’re sleeping in the living room.”

“It’s perfectly serviceable. I don’t mind at all.”

“Spencer,” she snaps a little too loudly, and he stands from the sofa quickly but doesn’t move towards her. Emily listens for Casey for a moment before deciding that she didn’t wake her, and then continues in a softer voice. “I don’t want to live like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like your glorified roommate!” she hisses. “Like we’ve both agreed to politely ignore the fact that I’m still in love with you even though you aren’t. That hurts, Spencer. It hurts me every single day, and it doesn’t matter how much I adore being with Casey all the time… it just doesn’t get less painful with time.”

He stands rock-still and doesn’t say anything. She waits, but it’s no use.

“Listen, I don’t want this to be a big deal,” she sighs as she turns away from him. “We’re doing well, and I really am happy about that. I’ll look for someplace close – walking distance maybe. I’ll be around almost as much as I am now – Casey will be fine. But… I can have distance, my own space to work out my shit when it overwhelms me, ya know? The bottom line is that I can’t get over any of this if I can’t process it – get emotional. Safely. Without upsetting you-”

His hand is on her arm, skimming down to curl around her wrist. She’s startled and turns back to him with a jerk; she didn’t hear him move at all. It’s still too dark to see his expression clearly, but when he speaks his words are rushed and urgent like he’s nervous.

“I was clumsy earlier. In the kitchen. I didn’t mean to be. I should’ve explained myself more clearly-”

“You don’t have to explain anythi-”

“I want us to start over,” he interrupts, fingers tightening on her wrist slightly. “I don’t want you to go, Emily.”

There’s a moment where she can’t figure out what’s happening no matter how hard she tries. They just stare at each other, his hand on her, and she blinking back at him in muted disbelief. He can’t mean this… He’s been so angry… She must be misunderstanding.

“ _What?_ ” she whispers eventually.

“I want us to… try again. Start over. That’s what I meant to say while we were doing dishes, and then I kinda lost my nerve…” He ducks his head and then she can almost feel him peering at her cautiously through his drooping hair. “I haven’t fallen out of love with you, Em.”

“But… you told me that you could never forgive me.”

“I know. That’s true.”

“Well then, how does this work?”

“It’s… it’s not about forgiveness.” He swallows hard enough that she can hear it. “It’s about putting all of that aside – not forgotten, but _aside_ – and starting fresh.”

“Spencer, we’ve known each other for almost a decade. We live together. We have a child together. Tell me you aren’t honestly suggesting that we try to date like two strangers…”

“No, that would be impossible.” He shakes his head in the dark and then his fingers skim down to hers, just curling around them. “But what you just said – about us knowing each other – that’s part of the reason why I want to try this. We’re… trapped by this one, huge moment between us that neither of us can change. Nothing you could say would excuse it, and nothing I can do will erase it from me. But we have ten years-worth of moments between us also. And… I can’t make myself give up on all of those because of _one_ that went disastrously wrong. That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

He looks at her and his voice is unsure. She can barely breathe. “Are you asking me because you don’t know? ‘Cause I don’t know either.”

He sighs and shakes his head again. “I don’t know what I’m asking. I’m very unsure about all of this, to be honest.”

“Then…” she gulps. “Why suggest it?”

His fingers tighten and then worm their way between hers. Her lungs feel like she’s suddenly trying to breathe through a million stars. “Because I _am_ happier now you’re back, and when you told me you wanted to move out just now, my first reaction was claustrophobic panic at you leaving again. It wasn’t resentment or relief or anger. It was panic and grief and ‘please don’t go’… That’s gotta mean something, Emily. It’s _got_ to.”

The stars expand in her chest and air stutters out of her painfully. She doesn’t try to hide it from him even though she looks away and her bones feel like they’ll collapse on her at any moment. He steps a little closer – she can feel it without seeing. His breath breezes across her neck and he’s having trouble with it as well. That does something to her and she turns back a little shyly, not sure how to behave with him – this man she knows so well and doesn’t understand at the same time. Her fingers tighten in his, and then his other hand reaches for hers. They stand there together in the dark, facing each other and holding hands, neither sure what to do next.

“Okay,” she whispers when she can manage it.

“Okay? Okay, what?”

“Okay, I won’t move out. I’ll try this… new beginning with you.” She huffs and then forces herself to look into the shadows of his face. “What do we do now?”

He shrugs. “Not exactly sure, except…”

“Except what?”

“We need to be completely honest with each other. About everything. Everything that’s ever happened in our lives, even the stuff we really don’t want anyone to know about. That’s the only way I think this has a shot at working.”

Emily lets out a huge, complicated sigh. “That will not be easy.”

“I don’t expect it to be.”

“You know almost all about me now as it is…” she says.

“Almost isn’t good enough,” he responds and then stares at her for a minute in silence. She withers a little, and then he continues. “I’ll start if you want.”

“You?”

He nods solemnly. “I haven’t told you everything. The most damning thing… is something I really don’t want to tell you. But… this is my rule, so…”

She waits and wonders what he could possibly have done that’s so bad, or at least worse than anything she already knows about him. He clears his throat and drops her hands. It feels like he doesn’t want support to get him through this – or maybe doesn’t deserve it – and her stomach gets tight.

“You’ll hate me for this,” he mumbles and then shakes himself all over. “Three months after you left, I called an old dealer and got my hands on some Dilaudid. I had it brought here, to the apartment. Casey was asleep in the nursery.”

Her whole body goes cold in an instant and she understands why he let go of her. She would’ve dropped his hands if he hadn’t already done it. She strains to remember that hazy time so long ago when he was using, when they were barely friends. She doesn’t know if she’d recognize him as being high if he were actively trying to hide it. She hasn’t seen the inside of his arms since she got back… Her eyes duck down to his shirt sleeves covering him.

“I didn’t get high,” he sighs. “I wanted to. I intended to. But I heard Casey crying from the nursery and… I dunno. It stopped me. I called Hotch instead and he came over to straighten me out.”

She finds herself nodding because she has to respond somehow, but she wants to yell at him, ask him where he gets off resenting her for her decisions when he’s done something _like this._

“I don’t have an excuse,” he continues cautiously when she says nothing. “I can’t allow myself an excuse. I was grieving and drunk and completely wrapped up in my own misery, but none of that vindicates my choice. I forgot about everyone but me. No one mattered but me.”

“Casey was _in_ the apartment,” she finds herself whispering. He nods. She looks at him. “You brought a drug dealer to your home. You forgot about your daughter.”

Her voice is quiet and even, like she’s delivering a profile, but he flinches anyway.

“I did,” he breathes, and it comes out wet. 

Another painful minute of silence stretches between them. In her mind, all she can see is Casey, red-faced and screaming with Reid passed out somewhere beyond hearing or caring for her. Heat races across her where she was cold only a moment before, and the back of her neck prickles with the adrenaline rush she knows from chasing too many killers, nailing too many bastards.

“Okay,” she huffs out with great effort, and shakes off the emotion before looking back at him again and squaring her shoulders. “What else?”

He blinks at her, head bobbing a little in confusion. “Okay? You’re okay with this?”

“No, Spencer, I’m not fucking okay with you buying drugs and nearly getting high while being the sole caregiver to our daughter,” she warns, and then reins herself back in. “But, like you said, it’s a decision you can’t change now. And you _stopped yourself._ That counts for something. And this total honesty stuff won’t work if we flip out at each other over everything we hear that we hate, will it? We’ve just gotta get it all out there. It’s not about judgment, it’s about trust. So… now I know this about you. It’s not a secret. What’s next on your list?”

“Well, uh… honestly, I thought we’d have to spend a lot of time on that one, so I’m a little unprepared for follow-up right now.” His voice is quiet, as if he’s trying to make himself small, and he ducks his head again. She watches his shadow fidget and knows that he hates himself for that choice much more than she ever could. She _knows_ this because she _knows_ him, and suddenly, the knot in her stomach gives her an inch of breathing space again and she thinks that they might get through this after all.

She reaches for his hand again, drawing his head up to look at her once more. “Spencer,” she says gently. “What’s next?”

His fingers curl around hers slowly again and eventually he pulls her towards the sofa where they both sit. Emily folds herself into one end, and he the other, and they stare at each other for a while as traffic swooshes outside the window and the apartment settles and creaks around them. Then he sighs, runs his fingers through his hair, and just dives in.

“I guess I’ll start at the beginning…”

She settles in for a long night.


	61. Chapter 61

Reid doesn’t have a lot in his past that she doesn’t already know. When she stops to consider that, she is blown away that he always trusted her enough to be that honest. It makes her feel extra shitty about her own sins against him, but she keeps that to herself; she doesn’t think he means this process to be a passive rebuke and she needs to stop jumping to conclusions about what he’s thinking and actually discover it instead. She makes herself promise this.

The one thing that’s new is a story about some bitch in his high school who lured him to a football field by flirting with him and then handing him over to a bunch of shitheels who stripped him and left him tied naked to a field post. The story falls out of him in a monotone that only happens when he’s fighting to remain objective, and suddenly she’s fighting just as hard to remain neutral while inside she’s bristled and hissing, all claws and teeth looking for someone to punish. It’s such an obvious example of his abandonment and betrayal issues, and the incident basically sets the table for Simone to slip into him a few years later and do the damage that she does. By this time, Emily has sunk to the floor, back leaning against the riser of the couch with Reid sitting above still in his favorite corner. Her hand is stretched along the sofa cushions and she thinks she’s doing a great job of keeping her thoughts to herself when she hears her ragged nails digging into the fabric with a resentful rrrrrr.

“You okay?” he breaks her out of her thoughts. And then she responds the way she always does – wrongly – trying to deflect her discomfort with humor.

“Yeah. Just have a new urge to leave and go hunt down some assholes…” She grins up at him but he looks panicked and horrified. She feels her face heat and her expression collapse, and she can’t help but dart her eyes from him in shame. “I’m joking.”

“That isn’t funny.”

“I know,” she sighs, feeling about six inches tall. “I’m just… nervous, I guess. I do dumb shit when I’m unsure of myself.”

There’s a long pause and then he gently asks, “Why are you nervous?”

“Because I’ve gotta get this _right,_ Spence,” she snaps still not looking at him, her fingers finding an errant cushion thread and worrying it mercilessly instead. “This is a clutch moment for us, and I know if I screw it up there won’t be any more chances for me. And that’s…” Her fingers get a little manic with the thread, face heating so dramatically that it becomes a whole new layer of mortification for her. “That’s scary as hell. You probably don’t get how much I want this to work.”

There’s another long stretch of silence. She wants to look at him, to find some sort of encouragement in his eyes, but she can’t make herself do it. The threat of that _not_ being there is too much to handle. Then two long fingers find her hand and press it gently into the cushion, stilling it. She focuses entirely on the warm, pinpoint of pressure and stops thinking about anything else. Then his fingers curl around hers and just exist together on the sofa between them.

“That was the end of my story. Everything else you know,” he whispers. “I guess it’s your turn now.”

She stares at their fingers, his long and expressive, hers smaller with nails that give her neuroses away. She remembers the first day he allowed her to touch him. They shared a basket of fries at a greasy diner in Raleigh and she was never certain if he let it happen because he trusted her or because he was simply too hungry and exhausted to put up his defenses. But they ate those fries in silence, the basket sitting in her lap as they crouched at an abandoned picnic table out of the November wind, their fingers slipping together with the oil and salt making them taste like each other… 

She’s always liked that memory. She takes a deep breath and begins.

Like him, there’s not a lot she has to tell. There are a few boyfriends he doesn’t know about – men who were neither good nor bad, and whose faces have dimmed in her mind as she gets further away from them in time. And there was one girlfriend. His eyebrows rise slightly but he seems curious more than anything. She was curious too, but only for a semester, and then quickly realized that women were just as shitty as men, but with more conversation, and that was too exhausting to be worth the effort. 

“I like men,” she reiterates needlessly as she catches his gaze. He just smiles like she’s being ridiculous.

She goes on. There’s the brief interlude of teenaged car theft in Germany and later in Italy that she feels both shame and pride in retelling. She knows it was wrong, and her mother worked hard to make sure that she got out of it unscathed the few times she was caught. But it was thrilling as well. Perhaps it was the beginning of the danger kink that has caused her so much trouble in her adulthood. And then there’s the admission that she paid some AP nerd to write her Yale admission essay. Yeah, she’s _not proud_ of that, and it was totally a ‘fuck you’ to Elizabeth because she fully expected to be caught. But she wasn’t, and then found herself enrolled in an Ivy League college with huge expectations on her everywhere she turned. She looks to Reid and finds him smiling again and is a little taken aback. She thought he’d be upset at the deception, because learning is so close to his heart, or that he’d be angry at how she used that other student, even though she paid the girl well for the service. But then Emily thinks, _‘he probably wrote more than his fair share of admission essays for other people’_ , and is almost sure she’s right when he looks at her perplexed expression and starts chuckling. 

After that, she finds herself at the last two stories she needs to tell him, and she really doesn’t want to talk about either of them. She pauses as his laughter fades, and then his fingers squeeze hers slightly, a wordless encouragement.

“The next thing I was going to say is about what happened in Tunisia.” She looks up at him, and his eyes get bigger and darker somehow. “But I’m not sure how much you want to know about that. If you want to know it at all.”

He takes a moment to consider, and then swallows hard before answering. “What I know is that you found Doyle there and killed him, and that you were gravely injured in the process. Whatever detail you want to add is up to you. I don’t think it qualifies as a secret even though you did it on your own and haven’t talked about it since. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”

She blinks in shock at his absurd level of understanding. And then a moment later she gets it: he’s trying to make her feel safe in her confession. It’s a profiler’s gambit, in order to get a victim or suspect to open up about something their subconscious might choose to hold back. She’s seen his jealousy, seen how it disturbs him and how he tries to fight it, and knows he’s doing that here. It makes her less easy about telling her story, but it’s also reassuring that she _knows_ him this well. Still.

“Okay, well…” she breathes out and shakes a little when she does it. “What you don’t know is that he had me beat. On the docks in Tunisia. By all rights, I should be the one who’s dead, not him.”

Reid just blinks as he tries to comprehend that.

“He did what all narcissistic assholes do and started enjoying his victory before it actually happened and, somehow, I turned that to my advantage. But he had me dead to rights. I could barely find the strength to crawl away.”

Reid winces and she decides to ignore it while also cutting down on the graphic details.

“He promised me he’d come for you and Casey. _Promised._ And he also promised that he’d torture her in front of you, make you lose your mind from grief before he ended it.” She shakes her head to fight back the blurriness in her eyes and the closing of her throat. “It was just so… pointlessly evil. I don’t remember a lot after that, but somehow, he was dead and I was dying. I didn’t have any energy for hope. I was ready to go. But I do remember that I had one final wish.”

She pauses to shore herself up, but he can’t wait that long. “What was it?” he whispers, leaning forward.

She smiles at him, and a traitorous tear slips loose as her eyes crinkle. “To see your face one more time. That’s all I wanted. And I got it.”

His anguish turns to confusion in an instant.

“I looked up and you were _there_ looking back at me with all these worried wrinkles and questions all over you.” She wiggles some fingers in squiggly lines at his face which makes him sit back and look even more bewildered. She starts laughing gently to herself. “Of course it wasn’t you. I was hallucinating. It was probably whoever found me – I’ll never know for sure. But I was so happy in that moment, that Fate gave me a pass and let me _have that_ before I died… I was expecting darkness, nothing, but I got your weird face instead. In that moment, it was everything. Maybe it’s what gave me the balls to try walking two miles to the U.S. Embassy. I dunno, but I’ve always meant to thank you for it because without that, I don’t think I’d have made it back.”

She keeps smiling as he collects himself. It feels amazing that she finally got to say that without worrying whether he’d be angry she’d expressed it or hunting for hidden motives. He’s blinking too rapidly and she starts doing it too, then she gives him a break and looks away.

“I didn’t actually do anything,” he mumbles wetly moments later. “And my face isn’t weird…”

She grins to herself and turns back, curling her fingers in his a little more. “Spence, there’s something in me that leads back to you no matter where you are. It’s like… we’re tied together and the knot’s too small and tight to undo anymore. The link just _is._ You’re a part of me – maybe the best part – and that part gave me something when I had nothing left that day. So – yes – I wouldn’t be here without you, dumbass. Please accept that.”

“Okay,” he chokes, nodding and blinking.

“And your face is totally weird.” She smirks as he arches an eyebrow at her. For once her humor helps instead of hurts…

“Listen,” she sighs. “I need to tell you that I am really sorry for what I’ve done. Don’t misunderstand: I’d do it again if I had too – ending Doyle to save my family – but maybe I could’ve found a better way to do it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t comprehend the damage I’ve caused, that I’m not wrecked over having to do it. It’s… it’s hard to apologize for something you did for the right reasons that ended up hurting those you wanted to protect.”

“I told you,” he warns quietly. “We are setting that aside-”

“I know. And my apology does nothing other than tell you how much it hurt to hurt you, Spencer. We can set it aside, but I will always live in this strange middle ground between regret and satisfaction at the whole Doyle thing. It’s this… fucked up push/pull instinct in me that seems to sum up my whole life. I’m sorry for it. I’m sorry that I’m not who you expected me to be. And I’m sorry that this got aimed at you. You and Casey are the two people I can’t bear to see hurt in anyway – the idea makes me panicked and berserk. And it tears me up that I did that regardless, that I’m now another person whom you trusted that betrayed you, like Simone or that cheerleader in high school…”

“Don’t do that,” he interrupts firmly. “I don’t dump people into buckets like that. There are nuances. I would never compare you and Simone, never. That’s like finding similarities between apples and hand grenades.”

“Am I the hand grenade?”

He gives her a hard look. “That was a poor analogy on my part. Neither of you are hand grenades.”

She looks away from him and there’s an aching moment of nothing in the apartment – no noise, no distractions, just _things_ lying heavy in the air over them.

“I’m a very smart man, Emily,” he says quietly. “Do you really believe I’d fight so hard for something so destructive? Do you think I lack that self-awareness?” She turns to face him and he looks… gutted. It shocks the air from her chest. “You’re not the only one who goes mindlessly berserk at the thought of someone they love getting hurt. I couldn’t function, Emily, with you gone, not knowing… I had to believe you were already dead. That’s the only way I could survive. But that was its own, separate kind of madness.”

A wet noise escapes her and she clamps her hand over her mouth to stop it. But her vision blurs anyway. When he speaks again, his voice is wet also.

“I was stupid too. I pushed you when I knew better. I allowed myself to be passive and then railed at the things done to me. I got defensive, and then I held myself away from everyone when I needed help. Almost cost me everything…” he chokes and takes a bracing breath. “And I know that stuff drives you nuts.”

“It does,” she whispers.

“But you love me anyway.”

“I do.”

He nods. “That’s the nuance, Em. I hate some parts of you, but I fell in love with so much more. I’m fighting for the whole package, even the stuff I dislike, because we are so many different parts. There’s my friend, my FBI partner, my fellow geek, the girl under the tree, my daughter’s mother, the pain-in-the-ass hero, the stubborn bitch, my lover, the woman who’s accused me of having a mighty heart…” He makes a huge sigh. “This isn’t simple anymore. It isn’t flirting around and peaked curiosity and casual nights together. It’s messy and complicated, it’s angry and upset because we feel so much now and it’ll tear us right down the middle to walk away. And it’s _love_ \- forever and always no matter what we do. That string between us with the un-unravelable knot…”

She can’t say anything; her mouth won’t work. Christ, it really feels like they have a shot at this. Maybe more than a shot…

“You can apologize, and I hear you. I _know_ that you did what you did for the right reasons. Perhaps that’s half of why I’m so angry about it, because I can’t fault that you did it _for_ us and that you were a distant afterthought in the scenario. That’s something I’d expect from you… maybe I’m angry because I didn’t get out in front of it like I should have. I should’ve been smarter. My anger isn’t simple either, you see. It’s not about betrayal or lies, or anything that two-dimensional. I’m angry you left me behind. I’m angry at myself for failing you. I’m angry at Hotch and the team for how they handled it. I’m angry at Doyle because he threw a bomb into the middle of my beautiful, beautiful life with you… and that’s just _some_ of my feelings on the subject.”

Emily stares at him, suddenly doubting her previous hope. She opens her mouth. “Well… I-”

Reid holds up a hand to stop her and continues gently. “But the thing is, Em, anger doesn’t last. You know this – you’ve seen it dissipate in the time since you’ve been back. If we can both agree to put Doyle aside, I believe there’s a way back for us. We aren’t simple anymore, but who wants simple? So, you’re sorry. I believe you. I’m sorry too, and I hope you believe me. We tell each other our stories and we put our pasts behind us where they belong. Let’s _do this_ because you say I don’t know how much you want this, but I rather think I do.”

She’s numb and gobsmacked for a heartbeat as her brain tries to absorb what he’s just said. And then her chest quietly implodes in a swirl of vibrant, painful hope, and adoration, and _‘fuck, what did I ever do to deserve you?’_

Reid clears his throat after another long bout of them staring/not-staring at each other. “Anything else?” he says, clearly deaf to the resounding thud she makes as she falls for him irrevocably. Again. 

But she knows this final part will be tough.

“Yes,” she huffs and slides her hand away from his, and he notices. Fuck, she _really_ doesn’t want to do this one…

“There’s one more thing I need to tell you and… I don’t want to. Especially after what you’ve just said.” She sighs. “But _because_ of what you’ve just said, I know I must. I ask you to keep your perspective, if you can. This thing isn’t anywhere near as important or damaging as Doyle was, or Marty, or any other secret you know about me. But you _will_ have a problem with it, I know…”

“Sounds daunting,” he says, as color drains from his face.

“We’ll see,” she gusts before taking a deep breath and just doing it. “I slept with Hotch.”

Emily takes a beat, watches Reid’s face closely, but he’s giving nothing away. Damn him.

“It was one time, years ago, long before I was FBI.”

She waits again. His eyebrows rise ever so slightly. “And?”

“And… Jesus, Spence, I slept with Aaron Hotchner. Don’t act like I’ve just admitted to stealing a library book. _React_ already!”

“I assume there’s more. I’m just being polite.”

She huffs and gives him a hard look. “Fine. So, he was vetting my Mom’s security detail and I was home visiting for some reason I don’t remember. This was a couple of years post-Marty and I was well entrenched in some spectacular self-destruction. He wasn’t married then – I don’t know where he and Haley stood, and, of course, I didn’t even know or care that there might be a Haley…” Her face was flaming but she refused to give into it. She was so close now, almost there…. “He was much more reckless than he is now, and I just wanted a body to make me anonymously alive for a night. I left in the morning and promptly forgot about him. He didn’t pursue me. I’d have probably been appalled and rude if he had. It was just a one-night stand – you have them and learn to live with however you feel about them afterwards, right?”

Watching Reid’s face go blank, she has this sudden feeling that he has no idea what she’s talking about. He’s probably never had a one-and-done hook-up. Her brain hiccups _Slut_ and _Whore_ unhelpfully, and she shakes her head viciously to stop her neuroses from paralyzing her.

“It was… meaningless. For both of us, I’m sure.” She winces as she says it about a man she’s come to respect so greatly. It feels dishonorable to speak of him so dismissively. “Then, years later, I discovered he’d be my boss at the BAU…”

“Wow,” Reid huffs, eyes going distant. “This explains _a lot._ ”

“Yeah,” she sighs and then risks a glance in his direction. “You didn’t think he was so hostile to me in the beginning _just_ because of the spying-for-Strauss thing, did you?”

“Uh, no… that’s not what I was referring to.”

“What were you referring to then?”

“I’ve found that Hotch always kinda has your back. In conversation. In profiling leaps. He gives you the benefit of the doubt a lot.” Reid has this ‘Eureka!’ look on his face that mystifies Emily completely. She didn’t expect this reaction at all.

“He does? I’ve never noticed that…”

“Well, he does.”

“Ummm,” she swallows hard. “He was very sharp when I first arrived and we eventually had to discuss the past. I received no benefits that day, lemme tell you. And we were both mortified. I think it’s something we both regret equally. But over time, I saw what a remarkable leader he is. I was impressed by his quiet intellect. I saw his loyalty and his drive and the deep feeling he has for those he cares for, and I wanted to earn his respect. And, eventually, he was gracious enough to give it. I’d walk into hell for that man. I consider it a fortunate twist of fate that we’ve become friends. And he’s one of the only men I trust.”

“Emily, that’s…” Reid stutters and then swallows down what he’s trying to say. “I’m pretty sure he feels exactly the same way.”

“I don’t know-”

“When you were gone,” Reid interrupts and leans closer, a strange sadness shadowing his eyes. “He always believed you were coming back. All of us gave up - _I_ gave up on you – but he never lost faith. It was always _“when Emily comes home”_ … He once told me _“we’re assuming she’s alive until we know she isn’t”_. I thought he was just trying to buoy me, but now I think he really believed that.”

Emily sits quietly on the floor and thinks about that for a while. When she comes back to the darkened living room and away from her memories, all she can conclude is that friendship is something miraculous and unpredictable. She looks up and finds Reid watching her, eyes still sad.

“Spence, what is it? Don’t tell me you’re jealous. Because it isn’t love. Not the way we-”

“I stopped believing in you,” he chokes out.

She blinks and then stretches her hand out across the sofa to land lightly on a leg he’s half-curled under himself. “Babe,” she says wetly, and then clears her throat to be stronger. “You had so much more to lose than Hotch did. It was _easier_ for him to have faith.”

“But _I hate_ that I did that,” he whispers. “I hate what Doyle has done to us.”

She nods and thinks about her next words carefully. “Me too. But I think I’ve gotten something out of this painful little confession.”

“What?”

She fixes him with a stare that won’t let him look away, and she squeezes her hand on his knee. “Hotch and I made a huge mistake. Something awkward and distasteful that we both wish had never happened. And then – somehow – we turned it into something amazing. We didn’t even decide to do it – we sorta muddled our way into it. I don’t think either of us regrets what we have become. And we didn’t have ANY back history to make an effort to rehabilitate ourselves worthwhile. But you and I do, Spencer. We have history, and Casey, and a desire to make it work.”

She leans closer, wishing she felt brave enough to do more than hold his knee. “Don’t you see? What happened with me and Hotch might be proof that we can do this. We can change what Doyle did to us. Don’t you think?”

It takes almost thirty seconds, but Reid’s sadness gets tempered by a shy smile. That smile has always been her undoing. She can feel herself blushing like an excited schoolgirl, and she buries her face in the cushion to hide it, and the accompanying grin from him. She’s made it – no more secrets to keep locked away. The relief is almost a spell that turns her liquid and exhausted, half-blending into the sofa.

Then she feels his fingers threading through her hair. She shifts her face to look up at him, and his smile is still there. “You okay?” he whispers as his fingers keep stroking, stroking, stroking. “Anything more to tell?”

“No,” she sighs gratefully and leans into his hand.

“You look tired.”

“I am. Secrets take energy.” She puts her head back down on the cushion. And then a thought occurs to her and she twists back. “Uh, may I ask something of you?”

His eyebrows do a curious squiggle. “Sure. What?”

“I don’t think… When it comes to Hotch, could you act as if nothing has changed between you two? I think it would hurt him deeply to know you knew about us. He values your opinion so much.”

“Nothing has changed between Hotch and me.”

“C’mon, Spencer…”

“I’m serious. I don’t think less of him. I don’t think less of you. I don’t really understand what happened all those years ago, but just because I don’t comprehend the drive for casual sex doesn’t imply that I’m troubled by it. I’m not even jealous, and, trust me, I find that surprising, all things considered.”

“Really?” she gasps, not entirely believing him.

“Really,” he says, eyebrows lifting in their own shock. “So… okay?”

“Okay,” she huffs and puts her head down once more. “Thank you.”

They fall into silence again as Reid keeps brushing her hair with his fingers and her eyes get heavy from the low-grade mesmerism. Sometime later he clears his throat gently, and when she opens her eyes, she can see the first signs of dawn coloring the tops of the windows.

“Don’t fall asleep on the floor,” he murmurs, but his fingers are still working, still lulling her down.

“It’ll be dawn soon. Casey’ll be up,” she yawns.

“You can still get a few hours. I’ll take care of her breakfast.”

“I wanna stay here,” she mumbles. “Just a few more minutes.”

“Okay,” he whispers in a voice that sounds quietly pleased, indulgent. 

When she wakes up hours later, drooling into a sofa cushion, she has no memory of how she got there, covered in a blanket. The sun is high and the day is in full swing, and when she pops her tussled head over the armrest to peer into the kitchen, she finds Reid dancing around Casey in her highchair. The dark circles under his eyes tell her how tired he is, but the vibrant grin he’s wearing tells another story that she hasn’t dared to dream in ages.


	62. Chapter 62

The Almost-disastrous Christmas Tree Incident is all Rossi’s fault.

In the same way that Reid goes a little bananas over Halloween, Rossi goes equally scooters about Christmas. And it all starts _right after Thanksgiving._ On this occasion, it begins with an early morning phone call after a few days of back-to-back tumult and turkey leftovers.

_“Are you decent yet? I’ll be there in 5 minutes.”_

“What?” Emily grumbles, rubbing her eyes while Reid stares at her from where he’s trying to funnel breakfast into Casey. “Good morning to you too, Dave.”

_“Morning, bella. Sounds like you need more coffee. Better get on that – chop, chop – we have a day ahead of us…”_

“It’s…” Emily squints at her watch. “6:30 Dave. Of course I need coffee. What are you talking about?”

_“Christmas tree cutting. We gotta get there early before all the good ones are taken. I won’t get saddled with a Charlie Brown tree because you need your beauty rest. Slap on some Lululemons and let’s do this.”_

“Wow, Rossi, just… WOW…”

Reid looks terribly confused and mouths _‘What does he want?’_ at her. She cups her hand over the phone speaker. “He wants to chop down a Christmas tree. Like, _now._ Today. He’s driving here.”

Reid’s confusion persists and then clears as he grins widely and declares, “That could be fun…”. And suddenly she’s left wondering if she woke up in the wrong universe this morning.

“Fun? Are you jok-”

 _“I’m on your block,”_ Rossi yells all stalker-like from her phone. _“Are you ready yet? Tell Reid to choose an outdoors-y tie.”_

“Rossi, it’s still November!”

 _“Pfffft!”_ he declares loudly and then hangs up. A minute later the buzzer to their apartment starts chirping to the rhythm of ‘Oh, Christmas Tree’.

“Better let him in before he scales the fire escape,” Reid chuckles as he spoons more yogurt for Casey.

Despite the excruciatingly early hour, the lack of snow, and the general look of implied insanity the tree farmer gives them when they arrive with an axe, baling twine, a baby, and an SUV that’s never been off-road in its life, Emily has to secretly admit that it’s a day she won’t soon forget. Casey is delighted to go on Rossi’s adventure, crawling through the needle underbrush between the neat rows of manicured trees stuffing every pine cone she finds into her mouth and grinning wildly when Emily or Reid leap to remove them. In spite of Rossi’s declaration that he does this yearly, he’s remarkably inept with an axe, and then looks extremely insulted when Emily casually asks him why he doesn’t use a chainsaw instead.

“If I wanted something easy, I’d go to the tree lot next to my Texaco station,” he snips before going back to aiming, and failing to hit his initial mark on the chosen tree.

“I’m just saying, seems like this could take a while…” Emily mumbles, wincing as he swings.

“It’s _supposed_ to be work, Prentiss. The seasonal joy is the sweat from the work.”

“Hmmmmm.”

But things don’t get really out of control until Rossi runs out of steam and Reid offers to take over with the axe. Emily grabs Casey and finds a point of safety eighteen feet away from any of his possible trajectories. The limb-flailing, huffing, sweating, miscalculated-swinging extravaganza is so impressive that even Rossi eventually has to step forward before lives are lost.

“Okay, kid, okay. Lemme go find the guy. I bet he has a chainsaw around here somewhere…”

The tree farmer saves the day, but Reid’s pouting is so intense that Rossi ends up buying them their own tree as a way of apologizing. As they follow the farm hands dragging their two arboreal victims back to the car, Rossi wraps his arm around Reid’s shoulders and gives him a vigorous shake.

“I brought some extra decorations I don’t use anymore. Vintage stuff. You’re gonna love them. You can start a whole new tradition with them. For you and Casey and The Complainer.” Rossi jabs his thumb over his shoulder back at Emily.

“Hey!” she yells. Rossi waves her off.

“Family traditions are important, Reid. It cements the love, ya know?” Rossi pats Reid on the shoulder and smiles. Reid smiles back, and then shyly looks over his shoulder at Emily. Her stomach flips, and she realizes with a sigh of defeat that Christmas Tree Fighting is now gonna be a yearly thing for them.

 

\----- 

 

Rossi’s hand-me-down decorations are beautiful. Classic glass balls and delicate frosted icicles, candied crabapple strings, portly snowmen in top hats, festive Victorian carolers in stoles and muffs with pink cheeks, and a beautiful porcelain archangel with a French horn for the tree top that, despite being atheist, impresses Emily. But it’s the light strings that really show Rossi’s age. He’s given them huge, tangled piles of ancient lights, the kind that take hours to sort out and test for burnt out bulbs and exposed wiring. Naturally, Reid thinks it’s all simply _the best thing ever._

“I don’t even think these things are legal anymore,” Emily mumbles as she attempts to de-tangle _and_ keep Casey from re-tangling what she’s just straightened out. “They sorta have an annoying habit of turning festive décor into raging house fires…”

“The Complainer…” Reid chuckles from his spot on the floor, wrapped around and around in green wires. 

She gives him a glare that he completely ignores, happily de-knotting lights and humming off-key Christmas songs for Casey’s amusement. Casey tries to crawl into his lap - _into_ the mess of wiring – and make a little nest, and then Reid spends far too much time trying to extract her while she wiggles and turns it into a game on him. Emily’s heart seizes up on her suddenly as she watches them together. They are just too beautiful and the moment is perfect, making her feel like maybe she’s only dreaming this, and then Casey grabs Reid’s hand tightly and he hisses from the blisters he’s acquired from his futile axe-wielding earlier in the day. Emily reaches over and hauls Casey into her lap, Casey’s little face all creased with worry that she’s done something wrong.

“C’mere, Casey-bird. Nest with Mama for a while.” 

“Mama, Dadee ow…” Casey looks concerned.

“Yes, Daddy ow-ed himself but he’ll be okay, baby.” Emily looks at Reid. “Need another band-aid?”

He glares at her again. “It’s fine,” he mumbles, but pokes at his existing bandages experimentally. She laughs softly at him.

“There are plenty of manly tropes you could aspire to, but there’s no shame in admitting that perhaps lumberjack isn’t in your wheelhouse. It’s not in Rossi’s either, or mine, so there’s that…” She cards her fingers through Casey’s tousled, dark curls, and receives a big grin for her effort, making Emily giggle too. “Next time we’ll rent a chainsaw,” she murmurs without thinking.

“Yes,” he says back in a strange, breathless way that makes her look at him, and his eyes are riveted to her, his smile matching Casey’s. “Next time.”

She feels her face heat but doesn’t hide it. Maybe she hadn’t meant to say it, but she’s fine with letting him know that she’ll still be around in a year, no matter how things work out between them. And if his smile is any indication, things will work out.

“Oooookaaaaaay…” she huffs as she plops Casey back into the light string maze and then hoists herself upright, considering the still mostly-naked tree in the living room. “I think it’s time to light this sucker. It’s probably the only way we’re keeping Squirt free from electrocution.”

Emily winks at Casey and she squeals with delight, opening and closing her hands like she going to help with _whatever_ is going on. And Emily launches into the tree with the first string of lights.

Forty-five minutes and a boatload of swearing later, they’re ready to test their apartment’s flame retardant status.

“Alright,” Emily wheezes from the top rung of the step ladder that’s half lost in evergreen. “Plug ‘er in. Fingers crossed, no explosions.”

Reid connects the extension cord to the wall socket and the tree comes to life spectacularly and, mercifully, flame-free.

“Ooooooooohhhhh…” Reid mumbles with an expression of childlike joy on his face. Casey mimics her father with a tiny ‘whooooo’ of her own.

“Oh, thankgawd,” Emily gusts, half sagging against the tree. Then she sees it: a burnt out bulb close to the top. “Dammit, we missed one. Hand me a spare bulb, would you?”

“It’s too high.”

“Gimme the bulb.”

“Let me do it. I’m taller.”

“I’m already up here, Spence,” She tries not to sound exasperated, but a whole day of ‘tree’ is more exhausting than she thought it would be. “Just… hand me the bulb. It’ll only take a sec.”

He presses the bulb into her hand and she stretches as far as she can, too far if her ribs have any say in the matter. She makes a few attempts, and then huffs and half lunge-hops to snag the errant light. Casey ‘whoos’ again from the floor and Reid hisses ‘Careful…’ She screws in the light and it glows a soft yellow of success. She turns quickly, sporting a huge grin.

“See? What did I tell-”

Then her side spasms and she has to grab the tree to keep her balance. They sway wildly for a second, and she realizes that if she doesn’t let go, the tree’s coming down with her. She releases it, whoops, and then tries to arch her weight back onto the teetering step ladder, but it’s already tipping. She closes her eyes, tries to shield her ribs from the impact with her arm and then…

“Gotcha!”

His arms are around her and they both thump to the hardwood ingloriously, him hissing as she lands awkwardly across his legs that somehow get tangled in a light string in the process. Casey ‘whoos’ again excitedly and giggles like a fiend. 

“Oh,” she gasps, opening her eyes and suddenly face-to-face with his hazel-hued worry, the tingles of vertigo making her feel electric and breathless. “I’m sorry. You okay? Sorry…”

“I’m fine, Em,” he murmurs back just as breathlessly.

He’s staring. Hard. As if proximity has given him rare permission to really look at her. It’s a little intimidating. But then she looks back. He’s breathing through his mouth, a little harder than he should, and it exaggerates the dip between his collar bones peeking through the V of his shirt. She suddenly realizes he’s not wearing a tie, though, absurdly, he was when they were at the tree farm, and his top two buttons are undone. She gets a good view of his throat, his neck, the lines of it as it arches up to meet his square jaw, which is clean-shaven today. His skin’s losing the last of its summer sun, but the light streaks in his hair remain, and it looks soft and warm, and she wants to run her fingers through it just to feel that alone. She wants to pull the tangles away from the sharp lines of his face, she wants to watch his eyes when she leans closer, when he knows what’s coming next and his mouth drops open, not for air, but for her…

But they don’t. He just holds her, hands spread wide and sure across her back. She has one arm around his neck and her other hand pressed against his stomach so she doesn’t collapse entirely into him. And they stare, hoping to catch their breath. Casey is still giggling, clapping and chorusing ‘Ma, ma, whoooooooo!’, but Emily can’t think of anything but how warm his stare is and how great his hands feel.

_God, I’ve missed this…_

Then her brain burps to life without warning. “Well, you sure nailed this manly trope…”

He blinks and looks confused.

“Saving the girl,” she explains quietly, still too close to him, and now blushing. “Thank you.”

Under her hand his stomach muscles twitch and tighten and his breath brushes against her neck in a staggered way.

“You’re welcome.” 

“I should’ve listened… you’re definitely taller,” she breathes. _And warmer. And surer. And –_ “Though I’m not certain I could’ve dived to save you when you fell out of the tree.”

She’s means it as a joke to bring them back to reality but he acts as if he doesn’t hear it, just lost in whatever he sees in her expression instead.

“Ummm…” she mumbles as he continues to hold her. She feels like she _should_ say something. One of them should. Or _do_ something…

Eventually, he swallows, eyes flicking over her shoulder and then back to her as he smiles. “And look? Tree catastrophe averted.”

She turns and looks at their tree, now sitting in the tree stand at a slightly odd angle, but fiercely intact. And she grins, sagging a little further against him.

“Oh good,” she sighs, and leans her shoulder back into his chest, just enjoying how close he is and ignoring the fact that it’s probably gone on too long. Against her palm, she feels his stomach tense again at the movement but he doesn’t complain or pull away. Her fingers press and circle a little against his shirt, goading the sneaky warmth that’s quickly spreading all over her. “It’s actually a good-looking tree,” she murmurs.

“Yeah,” he breathes and it feels like his lips are near her throat. She shivers, and he shivers right back.

“Don’t tell Rossi I said that.”

“Okay. Ummm… why can’t we tell him that?”

“Because it’ll establish an unsafe precedent, and then we’ll be on the hook for whatever hare-brained idea he comes up with next.”

“Oh,” he breezes, and then she _does_ feel his lips skimming her throat. “Okay.”

_Oh, Spence… don’t… no, wait, do… fuck. Spencer…_

She knows he’s not thinking, not doing anything but trying to prolong this as much as she is, but there’s a part of her that’s afraid of how quickly they could both allow themselves to become mindless. And she doesn’t want that. She wants them to be sure, in control when and if they decide they can do this; she wants it to be _real._ So, she turns back to face him, bumping his nose because he’s so close, and then she uses the hand on his stomach to help gently push herself out of his reach. He doesn’t say anything as his arms fall away, watching her go. She gets free and kneels on the floor beside him. And then she reaches for one of his fallen hands. His gaze sharpens as he watches her lift it to inspect his bandages. Her fingers skim over his, flicking at the mess of half-stuck band-aids and drawing light paths across his palm. Then she cups his hand in both of hers and looks at him.

“Let’s clean these up right,” she says quietly with a smile. “Disinfect and wrap them properly, you know?”

_Let’s do this right, Spence…_

“O-okay…” he chokes, but he also smiles back, and she feels his fingers curl inside the shelter of her hands to tickle her palm. “That sounds sensible.”

And it is. But as she tends to his hands with Casey crawled between them and helpfully sticking band-aids to her cheeks, she notices both of them are still breathing strangely, and when she risks a look, she finds him staring as if he’s caught between choices he’s unsure of. And so, she sighs to herself and wonders how much longer they’ll manage to be ‘sensible’.


	63. Chapter 63

He almost kisses her. Or she almost kisses him. Either way, it _almost_ happens and he’s left stunned and shaking afterwards. The physicality, the ache for her roars back to life so suddenly, as if it’s always been there, and when he takes time to consider that, he supposes that it never really went away in the first place. His anger had become the guardian that blocked it from him. But now… he’s less angry.

And she quite literally fell out of a tree. His girl falling out of a tree, not the problematic chaser of killers or the woman with more invisible scars than he thought. _His girl._ And he’s suddenly very confused.

She has the good sense to stop it before it goes too far, but he can’t help the sting of rejection when she quietly, gently extracts herself from his arms. He’s missed her. He wants her. Always. All those cavernous, dark nights spent alone, remembering her sleeping curled into his side. The grief of dreams that melt in daylight and become scorched with incendiary resentment and isolation. The fear of knowing he’d grow old alone and only half a person. When she backs away, _this_ is what he feels.

But then she reaches for him, pulling his hand into hers. And her expression is tremendous, unfiltered, unashamed. She’s scared, not of him but of herself. _‘You probably don’t get how much I want this to work.’_ But he does, he really does. Every time he sees her laughing with Casey in her arms, or when she greets him in the mornings with a half-yawned ‘hey’, or when they’re doing something ridiculously domestic like sitting on the floor untangling Christmas lights… His entire being throbs with _make this work._ And his anger dims some more.

So, when she takes his hand and bandages it, he smiles and lets go of the rejection. She didn’t say ‘no’, only ‘careful’, and he sees the wisdom in that. He lets himself sink down into the not-so newfound ache he feels when she’s close. He remembers all the little moments that make the feeling so powerful now. And when she’s tending to him, his fingers never stop moving against hers, skimming, tracing, linking, and just as before, she never tells him to stop.


	64. Chapter 64

The café is so packed with people it’s making his skin crawl a little. He was amenable to a nice walk to his local haunt to get a festive hot chocolate when Emily suggested it, but this is _madness._ And there’s crazy Christmas music playing too loudly which is causing everyone to yell, and the combined body heat from the patrons and the overworked espresso machines are making it feel sweltering, condensation clouding the windows and making things extra claustrophobic…

“Hey, what do you want?” 

Emily interrupts his neurotic meltdown to get his drink order. She doesn’t look even slightly stressed, and that weirds him out more. He’s such a dented tin – he can’t even handle a busy coffee shop in the middle of December. Casey’s perched on one of Emily’s hips, head whipping around to take it all in, eyes wide and fascinated as she sucks on a teething soother ferociously. Yep, he’s the only one here who’s being odd about this.

“Are you okay?”

He looks at her and he’s obviously taken too long to answer. Her face creases with concern. 

“We can go, Spence…”

“No. No, it’ll be fine. I’ll have a mocha, please. I think I need the caffeine.” He nods at her and tries for a smile. “Maybe get everything in to-go cups?”

She smirks at him. “Sure. We can fuel up but we don’t have to hang out here.”

Thank god he doesn’t have to explain this to her. He sighs and part of him eases a little. “Do you want me to take her?” He reaches for Casey, who’s head is still rotating like it’s on a swivel.

“Nah, I’ve got her. Be back in a jiff. Try and find a corner to fortify yourself, okay? I’ll find you.”

She disappears into the bubbling mess of people crowding the front counter and his anxiety ramps up again as she goes. It’s stupid – she’s coming back. It’s just a crowded café, not some mythological maelstrom doorway to the underworld. He braces himself and looks around for a safe place to loiter. In the end, all he can find is a wedge of space between a wall and an overburdened coat tree. He stands next to it feeling ridiculously like the coat stand’s skinnier cousin, but with eyeballs and a too-long scarf and a pile of unfortunate social anxieties. Then things get much worse.

“Spencer? Spencer Reid, is that you?”

A petite blonde in a cream coat works her way to him through the crowd. She’s smiling in shock, green eyes bright, clutching her coffee in red-gloved hands that perfectly contrast her outfit. She was always so put together, he remembers.

“My God, it really _is_ you. What are the odds?”

_Fuck._

“Simone…” he chokes and actually _misses_ the anxiety that reduced him to cast-off furniture only moments ago.

Simone grins up at him, clearly waiting for something, but when he doesn’t deliver she laughs lightly. “I was sorta waiting for you to tell me the odds…”

“Oh, uh… yeah,” he says weakly and tries to smile back. “I don’t do that so much anymore.”

She laughs again. She does it prettily, like she’s going to be graded on it, like it needs to be as perfect as her outfit. “Well, I guess we all change, don’t we? You certainly have. Look at you! All grown up and in a nice suit…”

He looks down at himself, not really aware that anything about him has changed since she last saw him at age seventeen. He doesn’t _feel_ like he’s changed. He’s still stumbling in her presence, still half-terrified of her…

“Handsome,” she mumbles appreciatively and then moves on. “So, what are you doing in D.C.? It’s kinda the last place I expected to find you.”

“Where did you expect to find me?” He didn’t imagine she’d ever think on him again.

“Oh, I don’t know. Burrowed in some mathematics department somewhere up to your eyeballs in thesis submissions or theoretical proposals. I thought any number of universities would’ve given anything to get you… Is that what you’re doing here? Teaching? That’s what I do now – teach. Out in Alexandria.”

His brows furrow. “There’s a university in Alexandria?”

Simone’s cheeks get rosy and she looks away from him for the first time, worrying her cup with her pretty, perfect gloves. “No. I teach high school. AP calculus and algebra.”

“Oh.”

“I like it,” she adds brightly, and though he hasn’t seen her in years, he’s still fairly certain she’s lying. “It’s very rewarding.”

“You could’ve done a lot more,” he says without thinking. Her eyes snap to his and she looks hurt. Part of him immediately feels ashamed, but another part feels just fine about it, whispering _good_ in the back of his head.

“Not without a PhD you can’t,” she mumbles. And suddenly amid his anxiety and panic, a crystalline thought manifests and he realizes this is an opportunity to drop a burden that never should have been his to carry in the first place. He steps towards her.

“Simone, I’ve always wanted to tell you… After everything,” he swallows hard. “I tried to get the department to change their decision about expelling you. I went to the Chair, the Dean… I tried everything I could for weeks. They just wouldn’t listen, and I guess I was too young and naïve to leverage what power I had to get them to change their minds.”

“You…” Simone blinks rapidly. “You tried to get me reinstated?”

Reid nods.

“Why?”

“Because it was the right thing to do. Expulsion and defunding was an extreme reaction. At least, to my mind it was. Steps had to be taken - I understand that - but what they did effected your whole future. It was unnecessarily punitive.”

Her eyes flick around, landing on his and then flitting away as the blush on her cheeks gets deeper. “So, does that mean you’ve forgiven me?”

“Does that really matter?”

“Sort of. Yeah.”

Reid sighs. “You’ve been punished enough.” He won’t say the words she’s looking for, but this will give her the same thing. And she was never one to overanalyze anything flattering. 

Her expression brightens and she gives him a smile that’s all brilliant, white teeth. “Wow. You really are a decent guy, Spencer. That hasn’t changed in fifteen years. Thank you for trying, at least.” 

She reaches out suddenly, wraps a gloved hand around his forearm and squeezes it. She blinks a little too much, in a way designed to make him look at her eyes, and she steps closer feigning a shyness she never possessed. He feels an icy droplet of sweat trickle down his spine under his suit at her overt gesture and wants to step away immediately. It was the same thing years before when she ran through the socially stunned members of the UNLV math department like a hot knife through butter. Everyone wanted her and she knew it – beautiful and brainy didn’t come along every day in those circles. And then she turned her eye to him. He idly wonders why he never saw the conspicuousness of her seduction before.

“So, what do _you_ do now? You haven’t said,” she murmurs so that he has to strain to hear her. Or step closer.

“I’m with the FBI.”

Her eyebrows shoot straight up. “Really? Doing what exactly?”

“I’m a field agent. I work in Behavioral Analysis.”

“As in… profiling?”

He nods.

“Wow, Spencer. Like… _wow_. That’s probably the last thing I would’ve guessed. It’s so… well, I dunno. It’s definitely not math, that’s for sure.” She takes another half-step closer and gives him a conspiratorial look. “Do you have a gun?”

“Yes, I have a gun,” he sighs. “Every agent does, but it’s not really integral to what I do.”

“But still,” she winks. “Hot.”

“I guess,” he says looking around and trying to avoid telling her that the combination of sexual arousal and a firearm is the surest way to make his dick inert. “Hoplophilia is well understood and shockingly common in my line of work…”

“Well, what a surprise, Spencer.” Simone grins at him with pride, her hand still squeezing his arm. “You really grew up. From a skinny math nerd into a hero. I’m so proud of you.”

He meets her eyes then. Her pretty face looks at him enviously, twinkling with the spark of flirtation that captivated his teenaged heart. He remembers a time when he would’ve done anything to hear those words from her, to be her hero. He would’ve fallen into her arms and let her do whatever she wanted to him. He imagined that was happiness.

She watches him watch her and then she takes another step forward. “It feels like we ran into each other today for a reason, don’t you? Would you like to, I dunno, get a coffee together sometime? You know, catch up on old times…”

He freezes on the spot and finds he can’t do or say anything for a long, painful moment. And then he’s saved from himself by a loud shriek.

“Da-dee!” Casey comes tumbling through the crowd and half falls in his direction while grinning madly, her face smeared with blueberry muffin. Reid reacts immediately, swooping forward to collect her up into his arms as he tries to calm his pulse from almost watching her land face-first into the tiled floor.

“Little bird, Jesus!” he huffs, looking around. “Where did you-”

“ _Daddy?_ ” Simone says incredulously behind him.

Emily suddenly pops through the crowd next, breathless, holding coffees and a bag of baked goods while glaring at her daughter. “Holy crap, that kid’s fast! You were supposed to stay with me, kiddo. It’s like she has this killer guidance system that’s hardwired to find you-”

Reid feels Simone step up beside him, and Emily pulls up short. Then she flicks on a bland, polite smile like she’s turning on a light.

“Oh. Hello.”

“Hi,” Simone says as sweetly as possible. Reid watches as Emily’s eyes quickly sweep her up and down. Then her gaze flicks to him curiously.

“Forgive me,” Emily shakes her head, piles the coffee tray and pastry bag into one hand and offers the other to Simone. “I’m Emily. Coffee porter and toddler wrangler. Better at the former than the latter today, I’m afraid.”

Simone laughs and grasps Emily’s hand. “Nonsense. I bet she’s a handful. I’m Simone. Lovely to meet you.”

Emily’s expression somehow goes cold without actually changing at all. Simone doesn’t notice the difference, but Reid’s witnessed Emily switch into the diplomat’s daughter mask one too many times to mistake it. He swallows hard but Emily never takes her eyes off Simone. Their hands drop and Emily breaks out a frightening smile.

“Simone. Yes. Spencer’s mentioned you.”

“Oh really?” Simone grins and looks at him, giving him a playful shove. “Only the good stuff, I hope…”

“Hmmmm,” Emily continues smiling freakishly. Reid wishes she’d stop that.

“And who’s this?” Simone steps towards Casey and wiggles her fingers. Reid bristles as the movement brings Simone against him and between Emily and her daughter.

“This is Casey,” he huffs. Casey smiles shyly at Simone, wary of the new face but flattered by the attention.

“So beautiful. She looks like you.” Simone looks up at Reid and smiles. This might be the most uncomfortable he’s been in almost a decade.

“I usually wear less blueberry,” he says nervously and then catches Emily’s _‘what the hell?’_ glare over Simone’s shoulder. But Simone turns back to face Emily before either of them can do more.

“So, are you two…” Simone’s gloved finger waves back and forth.

“Partners,” Reid blurts and Emily goes completely still. She suddenly seems a thousand miles away, as if he’s just cut loose her only mooring rope to this moment. His chest throbs painfully as he watches her carefully do nothing, and then there’s tugging. But when he looks down he sees Casey’s blue-stained fingers yanking on his tie.

“Oh!” Simone brightens. “So, you’re FBI as well?”

Emily stutters a little. “Y-yes, I mean, I’m on a break-”

“No, Simone,” he interrupts more firmly and waits for Simone to look at him again. “We’re _partners._ Emily is Casey’s mother.”

Simone blinks for a moment and then smiles. She takes a step away from him. “I see.”

“Yes, I hope you do,” he adds.

Simone glances around, looking nervous. “No rings though?”

“It’s complicated,” Reid says.

“And none of your concern,” Emily finishes with quiet authority. When Reid looks at her, her polite smile is gone. _Oh no._

“Well,” Simone huffs and tries to marshal herself. “Congratulations to you both. That’s something, huh? Never imagined Spencer Reid as a father…”

“Why?” Emily steps forward, the anger he knows she possesses barely held out of her voice. “He’s a natural father. Took to it immediately. Or is it you could never imagine it because you’ve only ever seen him as the innocent boy that you molded for your purposes and then discarded?”

Simone’s body stiffens. “I didn’t use him. You weren’t there. He knows what happened between us.”

“He does, and he told me everything. Are you saying that you _didn’t_ seduce an underage boy in order to gain your other lover’s attention? Was it real love instead? If you had been forced to make a choice back then, would you have chosen Spencer?”

Reid’s stomach clenches because he really doesn’t want the answer to that question, but he should’ve known that Emily never intended for Simone to respond.

“I was forced to make a choice recently,” Emily continues. “And I chose him. I’d chose him over all other options. In fact, it isn’t a choice at all, in the same way that breathing isn’t a choice. But you didn’t all those years ago. Life as you knew it collapsed but even so, he probably would’ve stood by you – all you had to do was reach out to him. But you left him instead – a confused, heartbroken young man without answers – because he wasn’t the part of the plan that you wanted to possess in the end, was he? So, I’d suggest that you _not_ stand there and attempt to justify hurting him to me. You’ll find that I understand a lot more about that than you, and that I am not sympathetic.”

Emily’s voice is quiet and calm but her whole body suggests menace. Reid listens to her in shock, realizing what Simone has no way of knowing: Emily hates her because they’ve both done the same thing to him. Half of her aggression towards Simone is actually meant for herself.

“Listen, it was a long time ago, okay? We were both young and stupid…” Simone says.

“But what you did has been with him ever since. Has he been with _you_ ever since? Have you thought of him at all until you saw him again today?”

“I… well…”

“Emily…” Reid begs quietly, and Emily looks up at him, and then away, chastened.

“I DID care about him, you know,” Simone hisses defensively. Emily just nods and refuses to look at either of them. There’s an excruciatingly painful moment when no one looks at anyone and the café buzzes around them, oblivious. Then Casey yanks on Reid’s tie again and he looks down into her confused face.

“Dadee?” she murmurs cautiously, then points a blueberry-stained finger at his mouth, poking the frown he’s unaware he’s sporting.

“I’m okay, love,” he whispers into her curls, and he is. Finally. Then he looks at Simone. “We’ve gotta go. Busy day.”

“Sure,” she shrugs. “The holidays, right? Here, let me give you my card…” She starts digging around in her coat pockets. “I really would love to catch up, you know…”

“Ummm, well…”

“Here,” she holds out a business card between two red-gloved fingers. “We can debate the merits of pure mathematics as a life choice again, just like we used to.”

“No,” he says firmly.

“Why not?”

He looks over at Emily who’s finally turned back to face them. She’s got the thousand-mile uselessness about her again and more than anything he wants to walk over to her and say “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. My choice is like breathing as well.”

But he says this instead. “Why would I?”

Simone takes a step back and frowns. “What?”

“Why would I take your card?”

“Because… we were friends once.”

“No, we weren’t. I was infatuated with you and you weren’t. That’s all. Our entire history revolved around my unrealistic expectations of you and the intimacy that resulted when you didn’t tell me I was mistaken. If we were friends, we would’ve discussed why we were doing what we were doing. We would’ve talked about the future. But all we did was talk about other people in the department you didn’t like and sleep together.”

Something quietly builds in him and it banishes the anxiety he’s felt since she appeared from the café crowd. It warms him as it sweeps through his chest, along his arms holding Casey, up his spine making him stand taller… It feels a little like contempt.

“Spencer, I-”

“Why would I accept your card when the only thing between us is sex?” he asks quietly. “Why would I do that in front of Emily, who, by the way, is not only Casey’s mother but also a true friend to me? Why do you think I’d disrespect her that way?”

Simone blinks in confusion. He suspects that even now, she’s not used to being turned down. She looks back to Emily, who appears just as confused as Simone.

“I’m sorry, Simone, I don’t mean to be cruel, but I have no wish to have sex with you, and since that’s the only conceivable reason why you’d offer it in the first place, I won’t take your card.” Reid takes a step away and cuddles Casey closer. “I’m glad we met today so I had an opportunity to tell you want I needed to, but that’s all I want from you, and now I’m taking my daughter to the park.”

He shuffles past Simone and walks over to Emily, who’s mouth has dropped open a little. She comes to her senses quickly however, and snaps it shut, fussing with the coffees and pastries to cover it up.

“Spencer,” Simone calls out, and when he turns back, she’s frowning at him just like she used to when he did something that displeased. “I don’t appreciate the assumption you’ve just made about me. You don’t know me. You _ruined_ my life, but I’ve chosen to forgive that and reach out to you anyway. What you just did was unbelievably rude.”

“Ruder than fucking with a teenager’s head because your boyfriend wouldn’t play into your narcissism and bottomless need for approval, you mean?” he tosses over his shoulder loud enough that people at the tables around them stop and look up. The warmth coursing through him is making his skin prickle under his jacket. He glances back at her and sees hate in those pretty green eyes that haunted him for years, and once again something vengeful and delighted whispers _good_ in his mind. “I didn’t ruin your life – I never would’ve pursued you if you hadn’t encouraged me in the first place. But you’re right, Simone: I don’t know you anymore. But I did once, and based on that, I wouldn’t have coffee with you now even if you were the last human on earth and I was dying of both thirst and loneliness. Goodbye, Simone. Best of luck to you.”

Then he herds his family out into the crisp December air with a sigh of relief as he tries not to think about all the eyes in the café following them. 

They walk to the park in silence, and even as they sort out their food and get Casey set up in one of the baby swings, no one says anything, as if afraid to move past his moment of reckoning back into real life. Emily watches him swing Casey, sipping coffee thoughtfully from her perch on some sort day-glo painted rocking horse next to the park’s swing set. Casey laughs as he pushes her as high as he dares, but Emily’s stare feels much louder. His guts knot and his chest gets cold and tight under his coat, and he waits.

“I’m sorry,” she says eventually, and it snaps his gaze to hers so suddenly that he almost gets hit by Casey as she swings back at his face.

“W-what?”

“I’m sorry. That was your battle to fight. I shouldn’t have interfered – it wasn’t about me. And it turns out you didn’t need me anyway.”

He stares at her as she hunches around a children’s toy in her parka and mittens, hair blowing in the faint drizzle that will quickly force them from the park. Her gaze is huge and sincere, her affect apologetic and trying to seem smaller than she is. Everything about her seems contrite, upset, and it feels so completely wrong that he doesn’t even question that he has to set her straight. _Oh, I needed you there alright…_

“Come here,” he says as he slows Casey’s manic swinging to something less dangerous. Emily rises curiously and joins him, using her hand along with his to keep Casey’s rhythm going. He shuffles closer until their shoulders brush.

“I understood your impulse,” he says. “You were… defending your turf.”

Emily snorts. “My turf?”

“She placed herself between you and Casey. You and me. It wasn’t subtle.”

“Still… I don’t own you. There’s no… agreement here,” she sighs and focuses on her hand at Casey’s back. “And your history with her is _yours_. You had to face it. No matter how much I wanted to break her arms and legs for you…”

Reid finds himself smirking and then knocks her gently with his shoulder. “Such violence…” he whispers and hears her huff beside him. “I might have let you do it too, just to prove a point.”

“What point?”

“That _that’s_ what friends do when they love each other. They kinda lose their marbles to protect one another from harm.”

“You think I ‘lost my marbles’?” she chuckles and looks at him. He stares back at her, serious as the stuff that lies between them.

“She was never my friend. It took me years to see it, but, trust me, I did – I do, now that I have something superlative to compare it to.” He stares at her meaningfully for a moment. “And you haven’t used me the way she did. I saw you thinking it, Em. I know the sound of guilt in your voice. You aren’t Simone – you never could be. And Casey and I _are_ your turf. You know you have a place with us. We’re family.” 

She looks away quickly, focusing on her hands and pushing Casey in the swing. He watches her profile, which conveniently gets hidden by the wind blowing her hair around. Eventually he sighs when he realizes she isn’t going to respond.

“What you said… about the nature of your choice?” He waits until she turns back again. Her face is pink and her eyes look glassy but it isn’t from the wind. “For all of our… complications, I’d choose you over her. It’s a little insulting to even frame it that way because there _is_ no comparison between you two. And it’s not just about being parents together or having different expectations of relationships as you mature. I’d choose you over anyone.”

She blinks up at him. “Why?”

He sighs. “Seeing Simone today, I remembered why I fell for her.”

“She’s very pretty,” Emily mumbles, not making eye contact.

“That’s it,” he nods. “That’s all it was. No pretty girl had ever given me the time of day, let alone seemed interested in me. I was swept away by her attention, and I didn’t see the rest. I idealized the parts of her I didn’t know and made her into… this perfect romantic aspiration that was mine to lose. She could do no wrong - _I_ was the one who was going to ruin it with my flaws and shortcomings…”

“Spence…”

“No, hear me out. I thought those things for many reasons, but I am no longer that fearful, isolated kid. When I saw her again today, I really _saw_ her – with a profiler’s eyes. She’s still beautiful, still flirtatious, and that might be compelling enough for some. But to me, it’s just gauze over her frame, and underneath she’s just… barren, translucent. There’s no substance to her despite her charms and considerable intelligence.”

Emily watches him as he pauses and then shuffles closer.

“ _You_ are not translucent. You never have been. You are vibrant and sharp-edged and unpredictable. You are thorough and substantive all the way to your marrow. It’s not easy – that’s certain – and your layers can be deceptive and sometimes dangerously hidden, but there’s _so much to you._ It’s a tremendous challenge to know you, to _really_ know you.”

She looks away again. “Doesn’t sound all that great.”

“But it is great, Em,” he wraps a hand around her arm and turns her back. “It’s why I wanted to be your friend so desperately when we met. I wanted that challenge. I thought… if I could know you, it would be this reward for all of the crappy ‘friends’ I had to live through over the years. And I was right. Then… to love you? Well, once you’ve had a challenge like that, pretty window dressing will never satisfy again.”

He sees her throat move, gulping awkwardly as the wind lashes her hair into her eyes. He reaches up slowly and buries his hand in some of the dark tangles, gently drawing them away so they can see one another. She watches him carefully, with the nervous tension of an abused animal, and then, after a moment, she leans into his grip and lets out a long sigh, eyes slipping closed.

“Emily…” he murmurs softly, almost lost to the wind. Her free hand rises and grips a handful of his coat. And then Casey slams into the back of them with a shocked ‘Ow!’

“Mama!”

“Sorry, kiddo, sorry…” and she shuffles out of the arc of the swing while giving Casey a decent push at the same time. “Daddy and I weren’t careful.”

When she moves, it brings her right against his chest and his free arm wraps around her waist without thinking. It draws her eyes back to his and she smiles, tension slipping from her little by little as the seconds tick by. He’s struck by the notion that he’d rather be in this wet, grey park hashing out stuff with her than anywhere else in this moment. And Casey being a hooting, blueberry-stained projectile is just an added bonus.

“You know,” she says quietly after she gives Casey a few more pushes. “When she told me her name, I went from banal politeness to homicidal rage instantly.”

“I saw,” he smiles.

“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a polar shift so quickly. It was really disturbing.”

He cinches her closer and they both give Casey a push together, his chin brushing the hair by her ear as he leans in. “It’s wrong that I find that reaction compelling, isn’t it?”

“Totally wrong,” she huffs but she sounds amused.

“Just checking.”

He smiles and holds her, and they keep swinging Casey until the drizzle becomes more like sleet. Then Casey gets fed up with cold, rain, parks, swings, and her parents. She fusses and lets out her first weak cry that tells them what the next item on their agenda is.

“Oh, here it comes…” Reid mumbles as he releases Emily and tries to wrestle Casey out of the swing.

“Yep, nap time,” Emily concurs and packs up their things.

As they walk back to the apartment, carefully avoiding a route that would take them past the café, the day becomes dark and stormy in the mercurial way winter can turn on a dime. When they make it to their block, they’re half soaked from the sleet, Casey is soggy and cranky, and the world around them seems to gather in closer with foreboding. He doesn’t know what it is about this combination that prompts him to choose this moment, but it happens almost on instinct. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut.

“You know that I’ve made my choice, don’t you?” He shuffles Casey in his arms, which are aching from all the fight she’s putting into being carried suddenly. Emily looks at him, confusion peeking up from between damp, dark hair. “And like you said, it’s not really a choice; you’re air to me.”

They keep walking because they have to – both the rain and a fussy toddler demand it. But they also stare at each other in between avoiding streetlights and holes in the sidewalk. Emily’s eyes get owlish and her mouth thins to a firm line that she only does when she’s trying to keep things together.

“You won’t regret me, I promise. Not this time,” she says wetly.

“I’ve never regretted you, Em. You’ve seen what regret looks like on me. Today you saw it wearing a cream coat and red gloves.”

“Christ, you were such a badass about that. I was so goddamned proud of you. You didn’t need me there at all.”

“Yes, I did.” He looks over at her. “I needed my best friend to have my back, because I wasn’t as self-assured as I seemed. And I needed a reminder of what love really looks like. The messy, complicated kind. The kind that will do terrible things _for you_ , not _to you._ ”

The line of Emily’s mouth breaks, unable to hold it together after that. “Fuck,” she whispers shakily over the wet sounds of passing cars. “I don’t know what I ever did…” She stops and clears her throat. “You’re my hero. A skinny, scruffy, nerdy, rock-solid, possibly-magical hero. And I love you.”

It’s his turn to blink and lose his composure. His chest expands so quickly that it has a paradoxical effect of causing breathlessness, because all he can think about is how Simone said that earlier. But when Emily does it, the words make him lightheaded and nine feet tall and replete to the point of bursting. Because with all they’ve done to each other, it’s still _everything_ to be Emily Prentiss’s hero.

They’ve made it to the steps of their building, and he pauses and turns, trying to pull it together so he can say the words out loud also: _I love you too._ But Casey has other ideas.

“Fuck.” It comes out sweet and curious, and both Emily and Reid’s eyes become instantly glued to their daughter. Casey’s frown disappears as she looks up into the goggling, mortified faces of her parents. “Fuck,” she adds for effect.

Reid closes his eyes and sags into his daughter’s wet hood. “Oh no…”

“Fuck…” Emily gusts without thinking, and then follows it up with, “Shit… no! Baby, don’t listen! Oh god…”

“Stop it,” he begs weakly.

Casey begins giggling at their despair, rain and cold instantly forgotten in the joy of her new game. 

“Fuck,” she says with great authority and happiness as her parents groan.


	65. Chapter 65

It’s Christmas Eve and everyone’s finally gone. The party was great – she’s glad her mother suggested it _and_ that Reid didn’t have a panic attack about having so many people in their home at once. It was supposed to be small and low-key – and it was – but the ‘Elizabeth’ in Emily takes over for a while and now the apartment looks like something out of a Dickens novel: cedar boughs and pillar candles, holly and birch branches lit up with fairy lights, ribbons, presents and, of course, the giant, tilting Rossi tree. And maybe she’s had too much mulled wine because she’s feeling _very_ warm and cozy towards her extended family right now, and _very_ grateful to have someplace safe to finally call ‘home’. Of course, all the laughter, booze, food and conversation doesn’t stop a little bit of reality sneaking into the proceedings…

“So, what’s the deal now with you two?” Rossi sidles up during one of Morgan’s stories and whispers it in her ear. She looks at him and he’s uncharacteristically rosy, with a very full mug of cider.

“You’re subtle like a freight train, you know that?” she mumbles back with a smile. “Drink your cider. You clearly need more cinnamon.”

“Subtlety is for younger, stupider men. I wanna know where yer at, Bella. I worry about my kids.”

“I thought that was Penelope’s job.”

“It’s my job too. More than one person can have the job – it’s big, you know. Besides, her worry always involves feathers and cat videos. Mine involves _meddling._ ”

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” she says dryly.

“Oh, c’mon – the tree is AWESOME! You know you love it…” Rossi gestures grandly towards the lit tree as Emily eyes the cider sloshing around in his mug. “And after I interrupted whatever was happening in your kitchen at Thanksgiving, I knew I had to make up for it.”

Emily blinks at Rossi, lowering her wine glass.

“I thought the tree-cutting adventure might work, and the spirit of the season naturally makes folks more… _cuddly_ ,” Rossi continues, unperturbed. “I figured it could be an easy win, unless you guys consciously sabotaged it somehow. He was showing off for you pretty hard with all that axe swinging.”

“He _wasn’t_ showing off for me, Dave.”

“Bella,” Rossi turns to look at her directly, ignoring the rest of the room. “Ever since I found out about you two, it’s become clear to me that the kid has been trying to impress you for years. _Years_.”

“Dave, that’s ridiculous.”

“Really?” Rossi steps into her with a waft of apple, rum, and allspice. He fixes her with an evil, arched eyebrow. “He made friends with _your mother_ , for chrissakes. That’s a strong move no matter how deep in denial you may be. Do you know he’s teaching her how to knit?”

“What?” Emily twists around to look at her mother on the couch holding a dozing Casey, sandwiched between Reid and Hotch. Everyone is laughing at the punchline to Morgan’s story. “ _Knitting?_ ”

“Yeah, he’s teaching her to knit and she’s teaching us to make wine. Well, he’s trying to make port, but I’m aiming for merlot…”

Emily stares at him in disbelief. “My personal circle is getting incestuous.”

Rossi waves her off messily. “That’s just fancy talk for everyone who loves you discovering that they love one another as well. Which proves my point: he’s still trying to impress you. So, what’s the skinny? Are you two getting together, or what?”

Emily huffs. “It’s complicated.”

“Of course it is. But it won’t get less complicated any time soon, so what are you waiting for?”

“I dunno. A sign or something? Something to tell me that he’s ready.”

Rossi’s gaze softens and he leans in a little closer. “Look at him, Bella.” 

Reid’s spinning a tale now, his fingers dancing in the air and his eyes lit with mischief as he captivates the room. Casey nuzzles her way across her grandmother until she slips between her and Reid, and one of his hands falls idly into her curls stroking them absently as she pops her thumb in her mouth and falls back asleep.

“He hasn’t looked this happy since Casey was born,” Rossi murmurs in her ear. “He’s ready.”

Emily’s heart misses a beat clumsily and then rattles around unevenly in her chest. Her mother is watching Reid unfurl his story with genuine interest and a relaxed expression that Emily’s rarely seen. Together they cradle Casey like it’s a thing they’ve always done, and something inside Emily pings _‘Oh!’_ at the sight of it. When Reid finishes his story and everyone starts commenting loudly about it, Reid’s eyes flick around until they find Emily’s, and then he smiles, all teeth and sharp lines, before being drawn away again into defending his tale about Morgan slipping in a hog pen on some case they worked in Louisiana. 

_Damn,_ her mind hiccups. _Maybe…_

“Go get ‘em,” Rossi slurs and then gives her a lascivious wink as he wanders back into the fray to tell his own embarrassing Morgan story. Morgan gets piqued and threatens to shoot them all, which only provokes more laughter.

So, the party continues and the drink flows freely until common sense rears its head and J.J. and Will decide to leave before they get so drunk that they won’t be able to handle Henry waking them at five a.m. Then a concerned frown flits across Hotch as he realizes he’ll be facing the same problem. Regretfully he leaves as well, with a hug for Emily and a murmured, “This was good. It could become a tradition.” She figures that it could. After that it’s not long before the rest make their goodbyes with too-loud declarations of love and a lot of messy hugging. Elizabeth is the last to leave, standing with care and smoothing her perfect hair into place. Emily realizes with sudden delight that her mother is drunk too. It’s a good thing she has a car service picking her up, Emily thinks.

“See you tomorrow then?” Elizabeth murmurs as she kisses Emily on both cheeks. “Come by any time after three.”

“Yes, we will. How did you convince your chef to work on Christmas anyway?”

“Oh, I’m cooking, dear. It’s just a day for family, no one else,” Elizabeth smiles gently.

“Oh…” Emily stutters, unusually touched by both the choice and the sentiment. “Well… thanks, Mom. That’s really nice of you.”

“Nonsense. I’m looking forward to it. It’s been ages since I cooked a roast. Let’s hope I still remember how otherwise dinner could be… smoky.” Elizabeth laughs, patting herself at her throat as she chortles in a very unladylike way. Emily begins laughing too, mostly in surprise.

“Okay, Mom. Lemme walk you down to your car,” she chuckles in disbelief, leaving Reid behind to settle Casey in the nursery.

They get to the street just as the town car pulls up, but Emily is immediately distracted by something else as she helps her mother down the front steps.

“Snow…” she breathes in quiet joy as she tilts her face up to the delicate flakes swirling in the darkness.

“You always did love snow,” her mother murmurs. “Remember those Christmases in Connecticut? Before your father died? Those were my favorite.”

“It was just us,” Emily nods. “No guests or seven course dinners or carefully arranged parties. Yeah, I liked them as well.”

Elizabeth is silent for a moment, standing next to Emily in the snow. Her driver gets out and moves to open her door, which wakes both her and Emily from their memories. “Perhaps we can add this year to those.” She leans in to kiss Emily’s cheek again before slipping into the town car. “It was a lovely party, Emily. I had a wonderful time.”

Her mother smiles briefly, but genuinely before she’s shut into the sedan, and as it pulls away from the curb, Emily can’t help the swell of pride she feels at the modest compliment.

“Well, I guess I’m still desperate for Mommy’s approval,” she mutters to herself, but there’s no heat behind it. There’s only amazement that she’s actually looking forward to tomorrow.

She peers up into the darkness again, the swirl of flakes flickering in and out of view like distant stars. She closes her eyes and smiles, letting the snow land on her face with pinpoints of cold that instantly melt to tiny drops. It’s an everyday kind of magic, but she loves it regardless: the transformation, the quiet, the way the snow makes the night brighter, the way it blankets everything in unblemished newness…

“I thought you might be out here.”

She doesn’t know how long she’s been standing on the sidewalk looking up. It’s probably been a while – she’s shivering. He walks out of the light from the stoop and into the glow of the street lamp, dressed in a jacket and wrapped up in a long, stripy scarf. He’s holding something out to her: a coat.

“If you’re going to snow worship like a heathen, you should dress appropriately.” She allows him to slide the coat over her arms and nestle her into it in a fussy way. He’s smirking like she’s gone mad, but with an eccentricity he finds amusing. “There. Better.”

And she has to admit, it _is_ better. “What have you got against snow?” she murmurs as she flicks the end of his scarf. It’s the one with purples and sages and greys, and it brings out the warmth of his eyes and hair. She secretly loves him in it.

“I’m from the desert,” he sighs, but he’s still smiling. “Snow is a wet, cold, slippy incentive to stay indoors. And yet, here you are…”

“Snow is a paradox,” she corrects him. “It’s the harbinger of seasonal ‘death’, but without it, the growing season couldn’t renew itself. It’s cold but it encourages creatures to hibernate or huddle together for warmth. It happens during the darkest time of the year, but snow reflects more light than any surface other than water, and winter is the time when most cultures celebrate some sort of festival of light. It’s about hope and rebirth during darkness and stillness.”

He's quiet for a long moment, snow settling in his tangles that glow in the street light. “Is that why you like it? Because it’s about hope?”

She shrugs. “I like it because of my childhood, I guess. I’m a northern girl. Tobogganing, days off from school, making snow forts with my Dad… I like it because it meant it was a time of year when everyone I liked got together and was nice to one another. I liked the stories and the songs, even if they weren’t about real things. This time of year has magic, and the snow brings it. No matter how jaded I got, it’s always cut through that.”

She looks up into the night again. “If you’ve fucked up a lot, hope can be hard to come by. Magic even less so.”

He steps close to her; she can feel his warmth through her coat. She looks at him but he’s looking up into the sky as well. Then after a long moment, he turns back to her. “What are you out here hoping for?”

“Nothing really,” she says quietly, breath clouding between them. “I’m giving thanks. Sometimes you need to thank the magic.”

His brows furrow in confusion and he tilts his head slightly.

“I’m thankful that I’m here, alive,” she explains. “I’m thankful for tonight, with our friends, all warm and drunk and happy. I’m thankful for Mom, perhaps for the first time in years, and I’m thankful that we’re both trying to make that last. I am unreservedly thankful that I survived this year so that I could come back to be Casey’s mom. That feels like something I don’t deserve, but I have it anyway and I’m never giving it up again. Never.”

His expression softens and he nods, a hand landing on her arm and rubbing it gently through her coat. She takes a bracing breath and steps into him so that they are pressed together. His eyes flick to hers suddenly, focused. She swallows and hopes Rossi knows what he’s talking about.

“I’m thankful for you. That most of all, really. Thankful that you found a way to let me come home. Thankful that you gave me a safe place to fall when my strength was gone.”

He stares, and then his hand drifts up from her arm and skims through some of her hair, blending the snow into it with the heat of his passing fingers. He doesn’t say anything; he just does it over and over. Her breath rattles around in her lungs, but she finds enough to keep going.

“I’m thankful for your hope. You’re the most hopeful person I know, and I need that. Not just now, but always. I think that’s why we became friends in the first place. You have this… _thing_ in you that resonates through everything you try to do, and it inspires me. I guess I’m thankful that no matter how I’ve abused that hope, it still seems to be there for me. It’s like snow – it makes me feel unblemished and new – like I still have a chance.”

His stare gets worried, something questioning flitting across his eyes. His hand stills in her hair then drops to her shoulder, and he stands there, struggling. She doesn’t know if it’s the cold, or Rossi’s words in her head, or the ache in her that moves her, but she curls her hands into his jacket and pulls him just a fraction closer, her face inches from his and her nervous breath brushing him before it disappears into the snowy sky above.

“Spencer…” she whispers, and then starts shaking when he doesn’t respond. She closes her eyes and goes for broke, nuzzling forward blindly until she feels his jaw skimming her cheek. She can feel his breath against her neck, a flash of erratic heat in the cold air. “Please…” she begs, almost without sound. “Touch me.”

There’s a terrifying moment when he does nothing, followed by an even more terrifying one when he shuffles back a step. _Oh God… I was wrong… how could I have been so wrong?_ Then his mouth is hovering over hers and their noses brush and she feels his hands skim around her waist.

“Dance with me.”

Her eyes are closed but they immediately flick open to find him leaning close, his own eyes pinched shut as if he’s worried about her response.

“You… You can’t dance…”

His eyes open and there’s such unfiltered ache in them that she’d give into anything he said now without hesitation. The corner of his mouth lifts in a tiny smirk though. “Snow is remarkably non-judgmental about dance skills, and I don’t see anyone else watching.”

She wants to kiss him so badly in that moment it’s like she’s been sliced open by it, but he’s quicker, wrapping her into a sort of functional hug as he begins shuffling them around in circles on the sidewalk. He crowds in close, until they are almost breathing the same air, his eyes slip closed again and his nose bumps hers. She follows suit, closing her eyes and leaning her forehead hard against the edge of his. Their lips skim as they move, but nothing comes close to a kiss. They just turn and turn and turn as they hold each other, catching fleeting tastes of one another to the sound of an occasional car passing on the street. She has no clue how long it lasts. It seems like forever – she wants it to be forever. They’re both shivering, but not from the cold. They’re both waiting for something, but also contently floating in this moment.

Someone passes by; Emily senses it more than hears it. She’s too focused on Reid’s stuttered breath against her lips.

“Merry Christmas,” someone giggles as they move past, and it makes them snap out of their spell.

“M-merry Christmas…” Reid stumbles but doesn’t look for the well-wisher. His eyes are locked on Emily. The ache’s still there, but also the hope she was talking about, and behind that is the knowledge of who he is: her child’s father, her best friend, the little boy waiting by the tree…

She pulls on his jacket until the tiny space between them disappears and their lips meet. She remembers how angry their first kiss was and this is the exact opposite. It’s soft and gentle and full of memory. He slots against her, stealing what little breath she has, and it’s like tumblers falling into place, opening with a small but satisfying click. They move slowly, slipping and pressing close again, afraid to come up for air. One of his hands drifts from her waist and skims just below her jawline. The touch is so slight it’s barely felt, but after such a long time, it lights Emily up like electricity. She breaks from his lips with a startled gasp, eyes flicking open to see him just as astonished. She nuzzles back to him quickly, mouth moving across his when she speaks.

“God, I’ve missed you…” she quietly moans. 

His hands tighten on her, and then both of them are in her hair, clutching her to him with a strangled groan and a rougher kiss. This time it’s possessive, heated and sure from the memory of countless times he’s bent her to his will in exactly the same way. She pushes back, arching up onto her toes to change the angle and get more of his mouth. He gasps against her, one hand flashing to her back to wrench her closer still, and she finds her way into him. She grasps his jaw, and goes deep in pulls that she stretches out like she used to before Doyle, before Casey, back when things were simpler and they were just for each other. She knows those days are gone, but the hot frisson he sends across her body tells her that their chemistry – their magic – isn’t. And that’s another thing to be thankful for.

They break apart to catch their breath and his hands are suddenly holding her face as if she’s about to be torn away from him. “I love you,” he gasps, kissing her quickly again but still struggling to breathe. “So much that it hurts. It’s hurt for a long time, but it’s never gone away, Em. My God, so much…”

“Babe…” she says wetly, and then he’s cradling her face trying to shush away the sudden flash of relieved blurriness that’s threatening to overcome her. She burrows into his neck and the crazy scarf, and then his arms wrap around her holding her tight against him, his rapid breathing warm across her neck.

“I love you…” he whispers again, hands circling her back. “You’re my girl. Not _his_ , mine.”

She knows exactly who he’s referring to. Not that she was ever Doyle’s girl, but he did do his best to make sure she’d never be Reid’s girl again. “Your girl,” she chokes out, thankful and shaking against him. When he pulls back their hands move to each other’s faces, brushing cheeks and skimming lines and melting snowflakes as they take each other in with new, wide gazes. They stand in the street light and silently worship this moment as the snow falls around them, oblivious to its own transmogrifying magic.

“I’m cold,” he says eventually, still distracted by his fingers stroking hair away from her temples.

She laughs quietly. “Me too.”

“You know,” he leans in and brushes his lips across her forehead. “It was a night like this that we made Casey.”

She shakes – she can’t help it, heart rabbiting helplessly behind her ribs. “She’s the best thing we ever did,” she murmurs unevenly and he nods.

“Even if we didn’t know we were doing it at the time,” he finishes, pulling her into his shoulder as they turn and slowly walk to the building’s entrance. “I’m not sure I buy into this snow magic of yours, though it makes for a great story, I’ll give you that. But I won’t argue that our little girl has a touch of magic about her.”

He stops at the door and looks down at her. “Thank you for giving me Casey.”

“Thank yourself. You talked me into it, remember?” she says quietly, melting inside.

“You just needed a little nudge. That’s all,” he shrugs as they walk into the foyer and head for the stairs. “When you told me, I couldn’t imagine anything more amazing than having a child with you. It’s good to know that my brain didn’t overshoot that expectation.”

“Jesus, Spence… c’mere…” she huffs, heart in her throat as she pushes him against the stairwell wall and kisses him until he’s a little limp and holding onto her for balance. She still doesn’t know why he’s thanking her because if there’s anything special about Casey, it’s all from him. They break apart and he looks dazed and breathless staring at her. “I’m sure that kid’s magic because I’m fairly certain she’s the only reason why I’m getting this second chance with you.”

Reid’s eyebrows lower. “You earned your own second chance.”

“But would you have given me the opportunity to earn it if Casey didn’t exist?”

Reid looks thoughtful, going inward for a moment as his brain chews that over whether he wants to or not. Emily’s certain he’ll come to the same conclusion she has: he would’ve shut her out without the presence of someone who reminded him daily of who he was giving up on. And she’s fine with that. She doesn’t care how she got the second chance, only that it’s been given. She’s not going to waste it.

“It’s okay,” she says gently, stroking the side of his face with a fingertip until he looks at her again. “It just means I can’t ever take her for granted again either. That kid sorta saved my life and she can’t even walk on her own yet. She’s something else.”

Emily smiles at him, then loops her arm through his and nudges him up the stairs. After the first flight, he wraps his arm around her waist and they climb the rest in silence, leaning into one another. When they make it back to the apartment, they wander in and spend too long putting away their coats, both unsure of what happens next. Emily’s eyes keep flicking to the sofa and the sheets that she knows are stowed underneath it.

“It’s been quite a day,” he says nervously. When she looks at him, he’s not looking back at her, rather at the lit tree in the far end of the room. “Do you think she’ll understand what tomorrow is? That she’ll get up early?”

“Earlier than the crack of dawn?” Emily snarks softly. “That girl could wake roosters. I don’t think she’ll get it until we start unwrapping things. Then she’ll know something’s up.”

“Hmmm. You’re probably right,” he nods, still not looking at her. She wants to see his face, see if she should ask what she wants to ask. “I guess we should get some sleep while we can.”

His eyes flick to her then. It’s unconscious and for a fraction of a second before he looks away and shuffles towards the couch. But she _sees it:_ the want. Her stomach flips and she stirs up all the bravery she possesses.

“Spencer,” she murmurs and waits for his eyes to meet hers again. When they do, she stretches out her hand to him. “Come to bed.”

His eyes go wide and he freezes on the spot, arms half reaching down for his sheets. He holds the pose as if he’s stuck or trying to figure out if he heard her correctly. She clears her throat, tells her churning guts to _‘cool it’_ , and tries again.

“Please,” she whispers, wiggling her fingers.

He stares at her hand for a moment and then stands up straight. He stares at it again, his eyes sort of unfocused, and then he shakes his head and stumbles around the edge of the couch to come closer. He stops a few feet from her and glares at her hand. Then he lifts one of his and accepts it, gulping so hard that she can almost hear it.

“It’s…” she tries to ease him. He looks up at her. “We could just sleep. If you want. I just don’t want to spend any more time with the space next to me empty. That’s all.”

He’s still staring as he steps closer and she can’t get a read on it at all. Her heartrate rockets until she can feel it pulsing uncomfortably in her throat, and then her mouth starts working without her permission.

“There’s no pressure. It would just be nice to have you there… to wake up beside you. But there’s nothing wrong with slow. And I thought you might be sick of the couch by now, so-”

His hand squeezes hers and then his other finds her neck and curls around it, fingers circling into the suddenly-rigid muscles there. “Let’s go to bed,” he says softly. And then she’s sort of gasping and ridiculous from the burst of tension.

“Ffffwhoa…” she says unintelligibly, and he laughs, leaning in to brush his lips to her temple so that the sound vibrates through her.

“I love it when you’re nervous. Makes me feel so normal.”

Then she’s laughing too as he herds them both towards the bedroom. But when they get there, his mood has shifted again. His hands drift to her hips and just linger there idly. She turns back to look at him and he’s glancing around as if he’s never seen it before.

“I’ve avoided this place for so long…”

Her heart seizes and she crowds into him, cupping his jaw to make him look at her. When their eyes meet, his are glassy – it’s plain to see even in the gloom.

“Being here… it was always sacred to me. And then, I guess, I lost my religion…” His throat moves and he stops, fingers circling her hipbone cautiously.

“Spencer,” she chokes. “I can’t change what I did…”

He nods vigorously, mouth turning down. His intellect has put that aside but it’s harder to convince his body, his heart.

“But I’m here again, now,” she continues. He looks up shyly in a way that breaks her heart. “And if this is a kind of… church, well, this is a good place for us to start, isn’t it? People go to church when they need to redeem themselves, when they seek communion and forgiveness, right? You don’t need a holy place unless you’ve got something to make up for.”

He looks at her then – really looks at her. And his hand skims along her neck until it lands, palm warm and solid against it. “Sacred places can be shelters too, away from the vicissitudes of the world.”

She knows exactly what he means – it resonates through her, clear and bright and true. He’s always felt like a shelter to her, even when they were only friends. Someone she could whisper to, worry with, depend on. And some nights spent in his arms, in this bed… she hoped that the sun would never rise again. So, she gets it. He wants a safe place as much as she does, and he still wants it _with her._ She stretches up and kisses him slowly and softly, like a benediction.

“No one has sanctified this place,” she whispers against his lips. “No one’s blessed our union. But anywhere we can be like this for one another is special – set apart. That’s sacred to me too, Spencer, even though what faith I have left is battered and bruised. Let me prove it to you.”

“Emily…” he mumbles roughly and then collects her up in a solid kiss, arms crossing her back and pressing her close.

His hands begin moving, skimming along her spine, over her troublesome ribs, skirting the curves of her breasts through her blouse as if he’s still unsure he has permission. But his kisses are confident; searching and deep, pulling her lips to him over and over, lining her cheeks and throat with warm, stuttering breaths that leave her pliable and swaying in his wake. She mumbles something incoherent and joyful when his teeth tease her neck, and then his lips curve into her skin as he chuckles. That simple act reminds them how familiar they are to each other, and Emily feels herself melt even further into his grip.

Her hands start racing too: along his stomach, over the buttons of his shirt, skimming his shoulders and up into his soft tangles, which actually makes him groan with pleasure as she pulls. Being able to touch him again – freely, wantonly – brings such a burst of happiness that makes it hard to catch her breath. She’s mourned the loss of this freedom, taking it for granted for too long and not appreciating the underlying miracle of it.

“You let me touch you…” she blurts out, and he makes a ‘huh?’ noise against her throat as he licks and sucks his way down. She shakes her head, unable to find a way to explain it, but feels undeniably special that Spencer Reid, haphephobe, craves her touch, loses himself in it. “Help me with this,” she gasps, picking at his dress shirt, and he wiggles back, undoing the first few buttons and then unceremoniously yanking it over his head and away. Then his arms are back around her and his mouth is sealed to hers.

Her hands move over his skin, the flat planes of him, the notches of his ribs, and up along the ropey lengths of his arms. The muscles flex as he moves, and she pulls her mouth from his, gulping down air and finding her fingers splayed across a tattoo. Then she glances around trying to see as many of them as she can. She’s missed these as well – the silent reminders of his life that he chose to give to her and no one else. She makes a wet sigh as her fingers outline the childlike one of him floating with a balloon – arguably her favorite after the one over his heart. His hands quieten where they’ve crept up under her blouse and his lips move to her cheek.

“Everything okay?” he husks.

“Take off my shirt,” she says wetly, and he steps away a little, probably confused by her tone. “It’s okay. Just… take it off.”

His fingers are quick and cautious as they flick down her blouse. She can hear him trying to get his breathing under control, but when he parts the fabric and brushes it away from her, he stops breathing entirely.

His fingers hover above her left breast and she can see them shaking. Then, after a moment, he grabs her by the arms and pulls her closer to the bedside table.

“Come here… into the light.”

He flicks on a lamp and then makes an odd, strangled sound as the black marks become clear. His hand hovers again and then slowly, haltingly descends to trace the forms across her breast. He doesn’t say a word, just skimming over the picture of a boy and girl with his mouth hanging open.

“I got it in Cairo,” she whispers. “There was a language barrier between me and the artist, but I think it turned out well anyway.”

His fingers trace the head of a young boy in a striped shirt crouched over a large book in his lap. A girl bends over his shoulder to look, hands braced on her bare knees, messy pigtail drooping over one shoulder, and a tiny bird perched on the other. 

“The style is more classic-children’s-storybook than I wanted, but he nailed the important parts.”

Reid looks up and her and his face is just… wrecked. His throat moves but he can’t seem to make words happen, so she rushes to fill the void.

“I… was at a point where I didn’t think I was gonna make it back,” she gulps. “I was exhausted, sorta strung out from the chase and the loneliness, and I was almost out of money. I wasn’t sleeping or eating much… just moving forward on fumes, really. I got to this place where I felt numb at the prospect of dying. I was just _so tired_ …” Her hand rises and covers the tattoo of the boy with the balloon on his arm. She squeezes it tightly. “All I knew was that I didn’t want to die alone. It scared the hell outta me. So, I was in the Khan el-Khalili and I saw the shop, and… it all clicked at once. I wanted a sliver of you there, with me, when I went. I thought that would make it okay. A month later I was in Tunisia.”

“Em…” he chokes.

“Do you like it?” She tries hard to keep it together.

“I love it,” he whispers, and then slowly bends to leave the lightest of kisses over it. “I only wish I’d been there when you got it.”

“You were.”

He cups her jaw and quickly draws her to him again, his kiss messy and urgent. She arches into him and then feels his fingers slip beneath the strap of her bra and pull it down over her shoulder.

“Take this off,” he husks into her lips. “I want to see it properly.”

She quickly shrugs it off and immediately his fingers are tracing the tattoo, it’s edges still slightly raised with its newness. Then he crouches to kiss it again, this time languidly and with reverence. His hands move to cup her, pads of his fingers tickling the soft undercurves of her breasts in a way he knows undoes her. He licks and mouths her, then moves to circle her nipple, drawing it in for a long moment before releasing it and cooling it with a light breath.

“Oh…” she mumbles and threads her fingers into his hair tightly.

“Take it off… everything… now,” he licks mindlessly into her skin. “Then lie down.”

She moans a little as she forces herself to back away and do what he asks. It’s not really a choice – her body does it before she decides to command it. He watches her squirm out of her remaining clothes, flushed, hungry, entranced…

“So beautiful,” he murmurs, and then seems to remember his clothes, starting his own awkward strip tease to get rid of them. “You were always so beautiful…”

Against her will, the image of Simone pops into her mind, with her perfect outfit and enticing gaze. Her neuroses kick in, telling her she’s too tall, too full, too dark, when his first love was everything but. She wants to say something glib like _‘gone off blondes?’_ just to give her an ounce of control over her insecurity, but she bites her lip instead, yelling at herself to remember that she’s an adult. His hand cups her face and snaps her out of it, his eyes wide and blown out seeing only her.

“You told me once there’d never be another for you.”

She nods as he holds her.

“Remember that day at Rossi’s party when you saw my stars… you touched them.”

She nods again.

“After that day, there wasn’t anyone but you in my mind. I only wanted you. I didn’t know how to make it happen, but… everyone else became background noise to me. I still feel that way, Em.”

She can’t do anything but let out this long gasp of relief. He kisses her – her mouth, her cheek, her temple, her hair – and then he whispers again for her to lie down. She does and he wastes no time, crawling up over her to kiss her, the warmth of his skin teasing where they brush together. Then his mouth skims down her throat once more, licks the hollow between her collar bones, and moves to lavish her breasts. His tangles drag along her skin as he goes, raising goosepimples that make her squirm and lick her lips. One of his hands cups her hip and presses into it to still her, glancing up her body with a half-smile as he watches her wiggle. Then he grins and slips lower, sucking marks into her abdomen, flicking his tongue over her belly button, and licking the crease of her thigh.

“Oh god…” she breathes out loudly and hears him chuckle.

Then his mouth is on her, licking and pulling, gasping away with hot breaths before starting again. His hands wiggle under her thighs and force them up to brace his head between them, and open her up to him. His fingers stroke her legs, the junction of her hip, and then back down to tickle the delicate part behind her knees, all the while using his mouth mercilessly to focus her attention to the ache between her hips. Her hands are in his hair trying to force him closer. She’s not going to last – it’s been almost a year. She hasn’t even touched herself; she didn’t see the point when the only way she could get off was to imagine him with her. There’s a pain to the anticipation now that it’s finally here, as if she needs to get it out of the way so she can focus and take the time she needs to show him how she really feels. She wants to say that, but she can’t do anything but wiggle under him and strain to get more air. She can’t even moan – she’s too tight, too dialed in, too _there_ already. She bucks her hips trying to trick his tongue into brushing her in just the right way – that’s all she’ll need, she’s certain. But he growls and then pulls his mouth away entirely. She cries out and arches from the bed to glare down her body at him.

“What are…” she huffs angrily, but that’s all she gets out before he rises up her body and takes her mouth brutally, tongue pushing into her hard with the taste of her suddenly blowing out her senses. One of his hands grasps the back of her knee and pushes it into her body until he can shuffle his shoulder under it, her calf draping over his back. She gasps at the exposure, but then he’s pushing inside her, too deep and too fast, and she arches away from the mattress into his chest as her whole body seizes around the invasion.

“Emily…” he gasps wetly through a clenched jaw, and then sobs her name again as he begins to move in her. She curls around him, pulling him closer with the leg over his shoulder as the other hooks over his hip. He has to work harder to stroke, and they both move together because she’s bound him up so closely. He whines and buries his face in her neck, fingers of one hand at her throat as he gasps and chokes from his effort. It’s hard and fast because it needs to be, the months apart stretching them too thin and brittle to do anything but crash back together when the parabolic energy swings around again. The bedframe is squeaking – she forgot it did that – and they are both huffing loudly when he brings them together. She can hear him slipping on the sheets, the soft hiss as he tries to regain his footing and keep the rhythm going. Eventually, he growls and the hand at her throat flashes to her ass, lifting her with a sudden grunt so he can get a better angle. It lights her up and she cries out, fingers digging into his scalp and shoulder as she tries to hold on. All the crazy energy circling her body gets forced into a tight, painful knot in her cunt, and he just keeps slamming into it over and over and over.

His name rips out of her throat, eyes rolling closed as she shuts down when the tightness expands beyond belief and then bursts. The wave of relief rolls through her once, immensely, and then leaves her shaking and boneless, floating on the tide of him still frantically moving in her.

“Em…” he groans desperately, back bowing under her hand, teeth at her throat. He throbs once, twice, and then makes a strangled _‘oh!”_ , then his rhythm abandons him as he just pushes as deep as he can go again and again, knees scrabbling against the bed for purchase, and making an animal noise of victory, all flushed and dominant.

“Oh _fuck!_ ” he yells loudly into her hair and then collapses in a flurry of twitching and wetness and distressed gasping. It takes him time to work it out, but eventually his body melts, his breathing finds a safer pattern, and his hands get gentle and soft against her again. “Fuck,” he mutters once more, face-first into the mattress. She laughs quietly.

“You okay?”

His tangles nod an affirmative into the sheets as he continues to wheeze. She reaches out a hand to stroke through them, and decides to put off telling him how one of his elbows is poking her stomach awkwardly. She keeps stroking until he finds the energy to roll off her, slipping down on the bed and twisting his face around to look at her.

“Hi,” she smiles. 

He just nuzzles over and kisses her, all slow and sweet. She holds her breath as she holds his face, and when they finally break apart his expression is the same look of wonder he had after their first time together. That of a guy who realizes he’s in love with a friend. He licks his lips, and then his mouth twitches as if to say something, but it turns into a shy, fascinated smile on him instead. She smiles back, feeling tears pricking at her eyes, then she ducks in under his chin and wraps her arms around him. His arms sweep around her as well, and then she sighs into his chest, feeling wholly safe with the foundation of him firmly around her again.

“Merry Christmas,” he mumbles into her hair. She squeezes him back as tight as she can, smiling into his chest as a relieved tear slips free.


	66. Interlude

Emily's tattoo (if it were a lot more like a storybook illustration and a lot less like a tattoo). Made in PowerPoint.

[ ](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/blythechild/6784666/507666/507666_original.png)


	67. Chapter 67

He sleeps for a few hours and then wakes to find her curled next to him, hands folded between their chests. A hiccupped breath comes out of him at the sight, even though he’s still drowsy. Perhaps a part of him expected her to be gone, or never there in the first place. But she is, warm and chaotic, and with the black ink of her tattoo visible even in the dark. He reaches for it, traces its lines with the barest of touches, and gets messed up all over again.

_Man up, already. It’s just a tattoo. Based on one of yours. About you. Over her heart._

He swallows down what it means to him: that they are bound to each other beyond Casey, beyond the work, and the years of familiarity. It’s something totemic that he neither understands or can quantify, like the characters he read about in some of his Mom’s more hysterical epics. The man he’s grown into doesn’t want to believe in such things – they are dangerous, hurtful fictions. But he _feels_ differently. He recognizes that he’s fractured when they are separated, all jagged and disjointed unable to project something whole and acceptable to the world. But together, he _fits._ She silently gives him the things he doesn’t have and may never have discovered otherwise. He’s a man with drive, and determination, and a goal; she’s the pistons that fire it all instead of leaving him sputtering on the starting line flailing around trying to clear the smoke from his life. 

But he’s still fighting the part of him she’s hurt. He knows when a part of you breaks, you don’t have the luxury of throwing it away, just like he can’t throw away the addict in him or the guy with social anxieties. You’ve got to find a way to fix it, because you’ve been given all of your allotted parts for a reason. She’s part of him _for a reason._ So, whether he believes in mythical connections or not, he’s determined to make the ‘real life’ them work again. Just differently, with a clearer understanding of who they are. After all, most of the heroes in his mother’s epics died needlessly for love. He’s decided Emily’s done all the dying he’s going to allow from her. They are going _to live_ for love instead.

He pulls her in closer and she twitches, arms tense as she tries to back away before she understands what’s happening.

“It’s me,” he whispers, and she quietens immediately, sighs and falls against him without waking. The pads of her fingers are now pressed to his chest as if trying to read his heartbeat like braille. He sighs too, dropping his lips into the mess of her hair tucked just under his chin. “Yeah, we’re fixing this.”

He sleeps.

 

\---- 

 

“Stir this,” Elizabeth waves him over to a roasting pan as she sprinkles flour into it. He starts skimming the unappetizing mixture of drippings, turkey and flour with the spoon she’s given him, but he’s not hopeful about the outcome.

“Not like you’re paddling a canoe, Spencer,” she chides softly, and shows him how she wants him to do it with a hand around his on the spoon. “That’s it… better. Keep stirring. Add some water if it looks like it’s getting too thick.”

“Ummm, okay… you know I’m sort of a gravy-from-a-can kinda guy.”

“Not anymore you’re not,” she says quietly but emphatically as she moves to carve the turkey onto a serving tray. He nods his head, though she isn’t looking at him. It’s best not to argue with Elizabeth Prentiss when it’s clear she has the upper hand.

“Thanks for doing this,” he says, stirring _exactly_ as she instructed. “Dinner, I mean. It’s a lot of work.”

“Oh, it’s not that much work. A lot of preparation, to be sure, and the last twenty minutes tends towards pandemonium, but otherwise, I just sit around drinking sherry, waiting.” She laughs a little, a sound that he still finds unusual from her. He smiles back anyway.

“Well, we appreciate it. Emily told me all about the holiday dinners you used to make when she was little.”

“Hmmmm,” Elizabeth is circumspect as she piles perfect slices of turkey onto a china plate that’s probably worth more than everything Reid owns. He watches her closely, sensing her holding something back, and then has to focus on the gravy when she tells him to add some paprika to it. 

“Something has changed,” she murmurs after a time, and when he looks up from the pan on the stove, she’s watching him, carving tools set aside on the counter top.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You and Emily,” she clarifies quietly, eyes sharp. “Something’s different now. I saw it at the party last night, and before. You’re closer. You don’t avoid touching her.”

Elizabeth cocks her hip against the counter and waits. He knows she won’t ask directly – she’s made it clear that she won’t interfere with whatever he decides – and then there’s the slightly awkward fact that he sometimes seeks relationship advice from his partner’s mother. He wonders if everyone is this strange, or if he just brings out this behavior in others.

He sighs, still stirring the gravy for distraction. “Yeah, things have changed.”

Elizabeth doesn’t comment right away. “Are you happy?”

His eyes flick to hers. That wasn’t what he expected her to ask. “Y-yes… yeah, I think I am. I mean, I think we could be…”

“Then that’s all that matters, dear.”

“Is it really?” His brows crease, doubt souring the thrill of last night, the elation of finally feeling whole again. “Because there’s a part of me that’s still afraid of her, of what she could do if I let her back in. I _want_ to let her in, but… what if it happens again? She’s the only person who has the power to destroy me like that, and she’s the only person I’ve loved this much. How can I trust that?” He gets angry, drops the spoon into the pan with a clatter and a growl of frustration. Then he has to pull it out of the hot, bubbling mess with a hiss at his own inability to let memories fade. “What’s wrong with me?” he mutters, mostly to himself.

He hears Elizabeth moving behind him and he’s too cowardly to turn and face her. Eventually, her hand closes over his and pulls the spoon away, the other turning the heat down on the stove.

“That’s enough,” she says gently, and then moves to pour the mixture into a serving dish while he watches. Her expression is serene, uncomplicated.

“Don’t you have an opinion?” he mumbles.

“Of course I do, Spencer.”

“Well?”

“If you’re asking,” she pauses meaningfully as she gives him a serious stare. Then she nods and continues. “You’re trying to anticipate future problems, which is to be expected given your history, but is also completely pointless. People aren’t controllable in the long-term. Trust me, I learned that the hard way with Emily.” She shrugs as she pours the last of the gravy and quickly gives it a taste test. “Love is a risk every single time, Spencer. Most of us are too blinded by it to realize this until it’s too late. Perhaps loving her has more than its fair share of risk, but she’s doomed to fail at it if that’s what you expect of her from the beginning.”

“I… I don’t expect her to fail…” he gasps.

“Don’t you? Isn’t that what this quagmire of self-doubt that you’re marinating in is all about?” She turns and stares at him. “Emily has this uncanny ability to exceed or disappoint in direct proportion to what someone assumes of her. I don’t think she’s ever strived so much as she did when she met you. It’s a long way to fall. Now, if you go hunting for signs of her fallibility, that’s exactly what you’ll find. She’s far from perfect, dear, but around you she tries like hell to be much more than she’s ever been.”

Reid glances away, unable to withstand the unfaltering judgment from Elizabeth Prentiss. He suddenly has some sympathy for Emily growing up under that unflinching stare.

“Did you tell her about the incident?” Elizabeth asks, and Reid isn’t confused about what she’s referring to. _Dilaudid._ He nods and swallows hard. “How did she take it?”

“She was angry, disappointed, just like I am.”

“Do you feel less in her eyes now because of it?”

Reid looks up, shocked, because he realizes that he doesn’t. He only feels the freedom of no longer hiding from her. “No… I… no. She knows I’m an addict. She told me that I couldn’t do anything about the past.”

Elizabeth nods. “Neither can she. And you know she’s lied and killed and done questionable things. You’re allowed to feel angry and disappointed about that, just as she is about the drugs. But if she’s lesser to you now because of those things in her past she cannot change, then you need to look at that. Now the problem is you, not her. That’s what I think, Spencer.”

And then she turns and walks back to the counter with the gravy, his eyes following her as his mouth falls open in surprise. 

“Well,” she sighs with satisfaction as she surveys the assortment of food. “I think we’re ready, don’t you? Let’s start taking this to the table before it gets cold. Call Emily and Casey from the living room…” 

“Elizabeth,” he gulps and grabs her arm. “I love her.”

“Then give her a chance _to try,_ Spencer,” Elizabeth murmurs, lines creasing around her eyes in uncharacteristic worry. “She’s only asking for the same thing she’s giving. She’s asked it of me too – she’s promised to try. And though we have a lifetime of failure between us… for what it’s worth, this time I believe her.”

“You do?” he says breathlessly, surprised by how much Elizabeth’s insight has come to matter to him.

“She has more to lose now than she’s ever had before,” Elizabeth nods, and then an envious smile curls the corners of her mouth. “And Emily’s ferocious about fighting for what’s hers. She’s always been like that, even when she was small.”

“You… admire that, don’t you?”

Elizabeth’s smile gets wider. “That sort of passion for life is a gift, problematic as it can be. I should’ve known that she’d never become a diplomat or a politician – we aren’t allowed that. Our passions have to be… politer.” She pats his hand on her arm. “In a way, I envy you both.”

He couldn’t be more shocked in this moment if he tried. He feels like he needs to sit down for a minute.

“Now, grab some food and let’s get this show on the road,” she hums as she collects the dishes with turkey and yams, and heads for the dining room. “Come along, Spencer. Come along.”

Reid helps to set the table in a fog of _too much braining_ until Emily saunters in with Casey braced on one hip, sticky Christmas bows littering her curls haphazardly. Emily’s eyes widen at the spread and she holds Casey up, zooming her along the length of the table with an excited “Oooooohhhhhh, look at all of _that,_ little bird!”

“Oooooooooooo…” Casey mimics, making grabby hands at the plate of yams.

The flight comes to an end as Emily reaches him, standing staring at her uselessly with a bowl of stuffing in his hands.

“Mmmmmm, Daddy has the best stuff.” She lifts Casey close enough that she can give him a glancing kiss while still trying to understand all of the food in front of her. Then Emily nuzzles in and gives him a quick peck of her own. “You smell amazing… like roasted things… Man, I love Christmas.”

She pulls back with a delighted grin and all he wants is to see her _this_ happy for the rest of her days. Screw his anger and fear and the spooling thoughts of the future that neither of them has a hope in hell of controlling. He sets the stuffing down and quickly pulls her in for a lingering kiss. When they come apart, her smile is smaller and a little curious.

“What was that about?”

“I’m trying,” he says, holding her with one hand while the other strokes Casey’s ornamented curls. 

“Okay,” she murmurs in confusion. “Should I be worried about this?”

“Not at all. I had an unanticipated, emotional freak-out while making the gravy, but Elizabeth set me straight.”

“Wow. I never would’ve guessed that I’d hear that sentence in my lifetime. And I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s not important,” he murmurs. “I’m just… I’ve decided to be happy. That’s all.”

“Spencer…” Her eyes crinkle with concern and a hand drifts up to cup his jaw, but Elizabeth clears her throat at the far end of the table until they look at her. One of her perfect eyebrows is arched.

“Enough canoodling. I didn’t cook all of this, or drink so much sherry, just to let it all grow cold while you two mess about. Sit down. Let’s eat.”

“Eat!” Casey says with glee, making Elizabeth smile.

“That’s the spirit, child. Now come… who wants what?”

They get settled at the table and Reid wonders how they’ll eat all of what’s there. An alien warmth blooms at the center of him as he watches Elizabeth and Emily banter, Emily encouraging Casey to eat small helpings of yam and beans from her high chair. Casey gets as much food on her as in her, and giggles happily when he tuts at what a constant disaster her appearance is.

“Guess you get that from me,” he mumbles as he wipes her clean for the fourth time. “Now I know what people have been trying to tell me for decades…”

Emily smirks at him and then winks. Elizabeth looks on indulgently. Casey cackles in delight, twisting to get away from her Daddy’s napkin.

“Fuck,” she giggles, and Reid suddenly wants to slither under the table.

“Oh god…” Emily breathes on Casey’s other side.

“Pardon?” Elizabeth says loudly from the head of the table, lowering her fork with great authority.

“Don’t react to it,” Reid responds quickly, eyes begging Elizabeth to let it go. “That just feeds into the game she’s built around it. If we treat it as normal – nothing special – she’ll lose interest in it eventually.” He _hopes_ that’s the case, anyway.

“Fuck,” Casey clarifies for her grandmother, whose eyebrows pop and then settle as she goes back to her mashed potatoes without further comment. And the giggling continues as Emily leans he head into her arm on the table.

Just another, _normal_ Christmas…


	68. Chapter 68

He’s walking around the room, naked, peering at the dark corners of the floor with a level of focus that is, quite frankly, ridiculous. He’s looking for socks or something. His feet are cold; the apartment leaks heat like a rusty screen door and it’s the middle of January, so… She watches the lines of him as he moves, the blurred details of his tattoos more imagined than actually seen in the gloom. Her arm is behind her head, blankets tucked around her so she doesn’t have the sudden urge to go hunting for socks as well. And she just _stares._

How could she not have seen him like this before? Why didn’t it strike her the moment they first met? Is it really a case of _knowing him_ making him attractive? Is he not objectively alluring too, aside from who he is? She knows she can’t tell the difference now – it’s too late to divorce the two concepts – but she’d really like to know if she just somehow ignored it for years. All that wasted time…

He finds some socks but they match. He throws one back to the floor and hops around to put the other on. Then he continues searching until he glances back to the bed and catches her staring.

“What?”

She smiles and shakes her head against the mess of pillows. “Nothing. You’re beautiful. That’s all.”

He ducks his head so that his hair hides his face. “Gimme a break, Em,” he says quietly.

“I’m serious. I’m lying here trying to figure out why it took me so long to see you this way. Because I’m _looking_ at a hot guy and it seems impossible that you weren’t snatched up by someone else before I got my shit together.”

He stands motionless at the foot of the bed for a moment and then quickly ducks down, presumably to fetch another sock. “You’re biased,” he mumbles from below the mattress, and then crawls back up and slithers under the blankets with her once more. Where his skin meets hers, he’s chilled, and she makes a tiny yipping sound as he pushes close to leech off her warmth.

“Of course I’m biased. That’s why I’m lying here trying to figure it out,” she gasps as his chilly arms and legs wrap her up like an icy octopus. “Sometimes I look at you and can’t believe I got you. Or managed to keep you.”

He looks at her then, trying to judge whether she’s being serious or not. Whatever he sees changes his mind and his expression completely. 

“We grow into ourselves, into our skins. It takes time. But I don’t think we ever outgrow our childhood selves either. As kids, neither of us felt wholly worthy of attention.” He licks his lips and shuffles in close enough that his whispering brushes her face. “But I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be the man you claim is so attractive if your eyes had never seen me. You’ve made me different – you know that’s true. Try to remember me as you first met me. I haven’t been him for a long time, just as you haven’t been the woman I met ten years ago.”

She wriggles closer on her pillow. “What was she like back then?”

He shrugs. “Intelligent, confident, aloof, defensive, calculating…”

She frowns. “Wow. Why exactly did you want to become my friend?”

“Well, you were the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen, so I suspect there was a rudimentary mammalian attraction component to it…” He grins and she gives him a mock-slap as he wrestles her closer.

“I’m only half kidding,” he rumbles. “You _were_ the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen, but I was accustomed to putting considerations like that aside since ‘gorgeous’ was almost never intended for me. It was your mind that reeled me in. It only took about two weeks for me to see past the confidence and glib remarks to all the neater stuff underneath. You had me then – I found the contradictions fascinating.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Why is it I can’t believe you’re attracted to my mind, and you can’t believe I’m attracted to your body?”

“Probably because our whole adult lives we’ve been coveted by others for the opposite reasons.”

“We are so messed up.”

“Yeah, but we’re super smart and we can talk about it, so we’re doing just fine.” He kisses her slowly until he leaves her breathless. “And you’re still the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever met. And you want me. That never gets old.”

They make out for a while, quietly rolling in the tangle of blankets, his stupid mismatched socks curling around her calves as they cling skin to skin, almost as close as they can get. She strokes his hair, kisses his throat, loses herself in the sound of them grasping, wanting, falling…

But then she remembers that there is a reason she wanted to talk.

“Hey, hey…” she breathes unsteadily, trying to gently push him back. “Can you stow the rudimentary mammal for a minute? I need to get your opinion about something.”

“What…” he says a little roughly, his pupils blown out and unfocused when he looks at her. “I mean, sure. What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking…” She bites her lip. “I think I want to go back to work.”

“Oh.” His face goes carefully neutral. “I was wondering when this might come up.”

“Yeah, so, I’ve been done with PT for a while now and, physically, I’m good to go. I’d have to requalify and everything, but that shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve been training for it.”

She watches him but he’s not giving her anything, just waiting for her to continue. “This raises some issues. Obviously. Now that everyone knows we’re together, the Bureau won’t allow us on the same team. And there’s Casey to consider – with two working parents she’ll have to go into daycare. That’s expensive, and I know we’d both worry about losing that time with her…”

“Emily, I’ve always known that you wouldn’t sacrifice your career indefinitely.”

“Yeah but, we need to figure out what works for us. All of us. That’s why I want to know what you think because I’m done making decisions and expecting everyone to be all right with them without discussion.”

He sighs, his brow creasing as he considers what to say. “Well, I suppose my first question is, I know you want something more, but are you sure it’s still the BAU you want? And I’m not asking because I want to keep my job on the team. I’d give it up in a heartbeat if it’s what you really wanted.”

“You… you would? I mean, I can look at other departments. See what openings there are…”

“But you _want_ Behavioral Analysis, don’t you?”

She nods minutely, feeling guilty. He’s already done so much for her. He reaches for her cheek and brushes it.

“I know that the Unit has always been the brass ring for you. There might be other departments open to taking you, but you know about the petty prejudices the Bureau has. If you jump someone in line for a position or use influence, you’ll have a target on your back from day one. And it’s not as if you don’t already have a reputation…”

She ducks her eyes away. Nothing he’s saying is untrue, but still, it hurts to hear him say it. His fingers skim under her jaw and lift her gaze back to him.

“If this is what you want, I’ll resign. It’ll make things easier on Hotch.”

“But… _why_ , Spencer?” she chokes out. 

“The Unit has never meant the same thing to me as it does to you. Don’t get me wrong – there was a time when I loved it and I would’ve fought like hell to stay. But going back into the field recently has shown me that I’ve lost my taste for it. I guess my priorities have changed since Casey entered the picture. And I’m not gonna lie: it’s a lot less interesting without you there.”

“Really?”

“I loved working with you, Emily. Long before I loved you. I miss that and it will never happen again thanks to Bureau regulations. I’d rather try something else than stick with something that no longer compels me. So, if the team is what you really want, that won’t be an issue.”

“But… what will you do instead?”

“Teach, consult, write a book, join a think tank, be a full-time dad, wait to see what drops in my lap…” he shrugs. “There are a lot of possibilities. It’s sorta exciting to contemplate it.”

“Jesus,” she breathes. “I didn’t expect this. I really didn’t expect this…”

“What did you expect?” He cups her jaw again.

“I expected you to… be defensive. To say I wasn’t ready. Or for you to tell me that you didn’t want me to put myself back into a situation that encourages my reckless behavior.”

He takes a deep breath and then releases it slowly. His hands move to her arms and rub circles into her skin.

“I’m not gonna lie to you: that worries me. And I know the job. I know how suddenly and randomly dangerous it can become. And I _am_ worried that you’ll go off to work one day and never come home again. I intimately understand how it will feel to get that phone call…”

He stops and his throat moves awkwardly for a moment in silence before he begins again.

“But… we’re trying, right? That means being open to what can happen. I can’t tell you I love you and then deny you something that gives you purpose. I can’t keep you locked away and safe, I can’t control you…”

“Spencer,” She grabs his face in both hands, probably too tightly. His eyes rise to hers and there’s worry in them as well as shock. “I will always come home to you. Always. There is no other option for me.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” he says softly.

“Watch me,” she growls before she kisses him. “I was almost dead on the other side of the world, and I made it back to you. If you only believe in one thing about me, believe in that. Trust that I am more stubborn about you than anything else.”

He barks out a soggy laugh. “You are stubborn…” Then he knocks his head gently into hers. “You’re not allowed to die on me, Em. If you do this, you have to be careful with your life. It’s not yours alone anymore.”

“I know,” she sighs back. “I feel this… tether to you, and to Casey, when you aren’t around. I feel it tugging at a spot under my ribs. Sometimes it even yanks me, usually when I’m about to do something stupid. I guess you’ve both collared me.”

She presses against him and just breathes for a while, imagining her wilder, younger self laughing at the idea of being tamed by anyone, sneering at how soft she’s become for the sake of a man. But she hasn’t – not really. Not for a cock in a warm bed, not to seem normal or because it’s expected. She’s done it for her friend, and their tiny bird. It’s not about being bound, it’s about reaching behind you and finding fingers ready to link through yours. It’s about the strength that gives you to keep racing ahead.

She sighs thinking about this. “I’m worried about Casey.”

He shuffles against her. “Why?”

“I lost six whole months with her.” Her chest hurts when she whispers it. “I don’t want lose any more time. But you know how the job can swallow you up…” She glances at him, bumping his nose gently. “Is this a mistake? Is it me being selfish?”

He kisses her. “I don’t know if it’s a mistake or not. I think you can only figure that out by trying it. I _do_ know that I can’t imagine you being happy without a job to do, and that’s extra hard to negotiate when biology tells you that you already have a purpose. I don’t envy you this choice, Emily. But I guess I’m selfish too because I want you to be happy, here in this life with us, and I think being an FBI agent as well as a mom is the way to make that happen. If I made you choose, you might not choose us, and I can’t handle that.”

“Spence, no-”

His fingers land over her lips to still them. “It’s okay. Don’t you see that’s okay? I _know_ you, and that’s why I’d never make you choose. I love you this way. Why would I try to change what I love?”

She starts blinking too fast, breathing oddly around the wet lump suddenly lodged in her throat as she wonders how she inadvertently acquired the winning ticket to this lottery.

“And if this metaphorical tether thing proves to be some implausible psychic connection,” he continues with a smirk. “I’m counting on Casey to yank you back when you get out of line. I think she’s turning into someone you shouldn’t mess with.”

She buries her face in his neck and laughs, hiccupping and relieved. His chest moves against her like he’s laughing as well, and his arms tighten across her back.

“You’re my best friend, Emily Prentiss,” he murmurs into her hair when their laughter dies down. “I just want you to be happy because that brings me joy. So, go out there and do what you’re meant to do because I’ve got your back. Okay?”

“Okay,” she gulps, still hiding against his neck, still not ready to show him how he wrecks her just by being decent. “I’ll run it past Hotch tomorrow. See if he thinks the Bureau has an appetite to forgive me.”

“If they don’t, screw them. There are plenty of policing/intelligence agencies out there probably looking for badasses.”

“ ‘Screw them’? ‘Badasses’? Who _are_ you all of a sudden?” she chuckles.

“Just giving you a pep talk,” he says warmly.

“If you start breaking out into sports metaphors now, I’m gonna assume that you’ve been body-snatched.”

“Well, what if…” He skims his lips down her hair, along the edge of her ear, and then to the soft spot behind it. “I pull a Morgan and say something like ‘let’s take it to the limit one more time, baby’?”

“I’d call in a priest for an exorcism.”

She wiggles until she can get a hand free and then grips his jaw to draw him back to her mouth. Her kiss isn’t polite because _he’s_ not being polite, saying all the right things and pushing the buttons she didn’t even know she had until she met him. The perils of falling for a friend…

“Right after we finish the important stuff,” she adds.

He laughs like he’s trying to seem demonic and rolls her back into the pillows.


	69. Chapter 69

Reid: Good morning  
Prentiss: So formal  
Reid: Ummm, hey good looking, how are you?  
Prentiss: Better ;)   
Prentiss: What’s up?  
Reid: A weird thing just happened.  
Prentiss: ???  
Reid: You know that I handed in my resignation to Hotch this week, and he passed it on to Strauss…  
Prentiss: Yes…  
Reid: Well, this a.m. I got an email from the Director of the FBI strongly encouraging me to reconsider.  
Prentiss: Like, “strongly reconsider” how? Is he pressuring you?  
Reid: With money, yes.  
Prentiss: Explain that  
Reid: He asked me what it would take to make me stay, and I told him that I wanted new challenges and I didn’t think the Bureau could provide those so I was looking at universities and private sector positions. Then he asked me what sort of challenges I wanted.  
Reid: Long email conversation short – he offered me a consultant/teaching position with the freedom to set my own hours, work with any team who asked for my help, and the possibility to freelance with outside concerns so long as the Bureau received a non-financial credit on any publications/initiatives/concepts. And he wanted me to recruit for them.  
Prentiss: Wow.  
Prentiss: What did you tell him?  
Reid: I said “no, thank you”  
Prentiss: Oh  
Reid: And then the weirdness happened.  
Prentiss: Huh?  
Reid: He asked if this was about fair compensation and then offered me a 10k salary bump.  
Prentiss: Well  
Reid: I said money wasn’t the issue, and then he came back and said “fine, just add a 0 to your current pay then”  
…  
Prentiss: What?  
Reid: I know  
Prentiss: WHAT?!?  
Prentiss: WHAT DID YOU SAY?  
Reid: What could I say to that? I told him to put it writing before I took it seriously.  
Reid: His office just emailed the formal offer through right now. Hotch is looking it over as I type this…  
…  
Prentiss: What are you gonna do, Spence?  
Reid: I don’t think I can turn this down, do you? The FBI wants to pay me a 6-digit salary to be a CONSULTANT.  
Prentiss: But is it what YOU want, babe? That’s the important part in all of this.  
…  
…  
Reid: We’d be free from financial worries. Casey would never want for a thing.  
Prentiss: That’s not an answer.  
Reid: It would allow me to continue doing the things about the job that I loved without the violence & danger & traveling.  
Reid: I can teach. I sorta love teaching. And I could still write a book or collaborate on research with other institutions…  
Reid: I could still work with the team, and with others. Still feel like I’m making a difference. Maybe I could even help shape the future of the Bureau.  
Reid: I could be around for Casey as she grows up. Be there for you when you go away and come back. Our home would have an element of stability to it.  
…  
Prentiss: Sounds like you want to take it.  
Reid: I think I do o_O  
Prentiss: You didn’t really need me for this discussion, did you?  
Reid: Of course I did! I want to know what you think.  
Prentiss: I think that I would’ve taken it for the extra 10k…  
Prentiss: Don’t do this for Casey, or me, or financial security, Spence. Do it because it interests you. Think of yourself FIRST, because you’ve sacrificed a lot to get where you are, and now it’s time for you to be happy.   
Prentiss: Give yourself permission to be selfish about this.  
…  
Reid: As long as I have my family, I’ll be happy, Em.  
Prentiss: Awww, S. cut that out. It’s too early on a Thursday for emotional texts ;-*  
Reid: *evil grin* You can’t stop the emotional texts. The phone company just keeps passing them on.  
Reid: I love you  
Reid: If Hotch says the contract is good, I’m going to accept the offer.  
Prentiss: Okay  
Prentiss: I love you & am sooo proud of you, S. You deserve to be coveted.  
Prentiss: By someone other than me, that is ;)  
Prentiss: It’s weird: in one morning you’ve managed to become the breadwinner & a stereotypical alpha male among other alpha males. I feel like this might be a Twilight Zone episode…  
Reid: Rest assured that I’ll always rely on you to shoot people and open pickle jars for me.  
Prentiss: Damn straight you will, Dr. Fumble-y McNoMusclesWhat?   
Reid: That text right there is the summary of our relationship: tender emasculation  
Prentiss: Yeah, but we compensate for that by being great in bed  
Reid: We do :)  
…  
Reid: So, when will you start back with the team?  
Prentiss: If all the evaluations check out, two weeks from Monday. Garcia’s already sent me 6 hysterical emails about it. I’ve stopped opening them – they’re all random punctuation and emojis.  
Reid: LOL! ;{0__! (: <3  
Prentiss: Yeah, pretty much just like that  
Reid: Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you, so I’ll let you get back to your day…  
Prentiss: I’m surprised you’re not trying to talk me out of going back, now that we don’t need the money…  
Reid: It wasn’t about the money to begin with. We talked about this.  
Prentiss: I know, but the danger thing really chaps your ass. I know this.  
Reid: ‘Chaps my ass’? This is the 1st and last time I will ever string those 3 words together… YES I’m worried about you but it’s MY problem to address. And I will. Promise.  
Reid: It’s not because I don’t have faith in your ability to kick ass. I’ve been the beneficiary of that several times over.  
Prentiss: That’s nice to hear :) But the real reason why you shouldn’t worry is because I’m not who I once was. You told me that I changed you – well, you’ve changed me too. You & Casey.  
Prentiss: I’m coming home every time, Spencer. I’m gonna get old & grey & saggy with you. It’ll get ugly, lemme tell you…  
Reid: You’d better keep your word, Prentiss, because honestly, that sounds fucking great to me.  
…  
Prentiss: Dammit. Tears.  
Prentiss: Gotta talk to the phone company about blocking you when you get sentimental  
Reid: :D


	70. Chapter 70

She’s completely exhausted. Twelve days in Topeka, Kansas hunting a child killer who turned out to be ancient with a lifetime of victims in his past that no one linked until the BAU connected the dots, and she stumbles through the door reeking of crappy hotels and greasy food, and just battered down by the vagaries of psychotic horror in everyday life.

Then Reid turns around from where he and Casey are sitting on the sofa reading, and grins at her, and suddenly she feels ten pounds lighter and very far away from any maniac with a knife and an unjustified hatred of the world.

“We wanted to wait up for you,” he says as Casey screams ‘Mama!’ with delight, arms in the air squirming to be hugged.

She drops her bags, swoops in and collects Casey up into her arms with a grunt, hiding her face in her daughter’s too-long hair. “You’re getting so big, Casey-bird…”

“Mama home! Miss you, Mama.”

“Oh, baby, don’t do that,” she gulps, trying not to see the faces of parents, both newly-grieved and those made old before their time by it. She feels a hand brush her hip.

“You okay?” he murmurs, and when she looks down at him, his eyes are shadowed with the understanding of what she’s not saying.

“Better now,” she smiles back, and she means it. 

She’s been back at the Bureau for five months, but it’s different and she can’t _quite_ find her groove. Just as Reid told her it wasn’t the same for him after she left, it’s not the same for her either. She still wants to be there – to make a difference – but the hunt is no longer exciting and her focus is always half bent towards home. Reid and Casey are the vivid parts of a dark and ruthless world. They give her perspective, they keep her whole, but increasingly she feels there has to be another role for her to play and it’s frustrating that she can’t see what that role is yet.

She lowers Casey back into Reid’s lap on the couch and catches a glimpse of what they’re reading.

“Is that… _Watership Down_? Sort of a brutal read for a baby, Spence…”

“Mama, it’s rabbits,” Casey explains seriously and holds up a scruffy-looking Aur to further illustrate her point. Emily combs the dark curls from her face and smiles, then is forced to do penance by kissing Aur until Casey deems she’s made amends.

“She’s not a baby anymore,” Reid mumbles as he watches the rabbit-kissing adventure. “In three months she’ll be two years old.”

“I know that,” she bends to kiss him next, but is slightly shocked by how quickly time has flown. “She’ll always be my baby.”

“A point which you two will no doubt argue loudly when she becomes a teenager,” he smirks against her lips and she swats him gently for his sass. Like _he_ won’t have problems with his little girl growing out of him…

“Still, a traumatic book with a lot of disturbing metaphors. And she’s up super late…”

“I’m skipping the metaphors. It’s all happy rabbits with overactive fantasy lives, I swear.” He settles his glasses over his nose, all serious and teacher-like, but he’s not fooling her. He’s never lied to Casey once; he’s giving her the full blood-and-fear version for sure. “And I told you we were waiting up for you. She’s been asking for you every day. Bed time has become tantrum time during this trip, so excuse me for wanting to avoid that tonight if I could.”

“Mama, good rabbits. _Bad_ rabbits.” Casey is pointing at an illustration. She points to the same picture even though she’s talking about different rabbits.

“Have you been a bad rabbit, Casey? Giving Daddy a hard time about going to bed?” Emily gives her best ‘stern Mommy’ look and Casey’s eyes go wide and she shakes her head until her curls swing around wildly.

“No. Imma good rabbit, Mama, good rabbit.” She turns in Reid’s lap to look at him, her expression one of pure toddler manipulation that both Emily and Reid are very familiar with. “Please, Daddy. More rabbits. Show Mama rabbits. Please.”

“Holy crap, she’s getting good at that,” Emily breathes, and Reid’s eyes flick to her with a glance of _‘I know, right?’_ Then he gives Casey a look that’s probably intended as a stare of serious authority but utterly fails to make the grade.

“Okay, ten more minutes of rabbits and then it’s bedtime, Little Bird. Mama can help you tonight.”

Who is he kidding? Ten minutes from now there will be another ‘more rabbits, Daddy’ debate. Emily smiles at him anyway – it’s the kind of trouble she’s up for at the moment.

“Let me go get into something clean and comfortable,” she says quietly, and he nods as Casey scrambles down into his lap and faces the book with excitement, holding Aur tightly in her small hands.

Emily collects her go bag and shuffles into the bedroom, Reid’s voice mumbling in a soft, lilting fashion as he picks up from where he left off. Casey declares “Oh Daddy! Bad rabbit!” and Emily smiles as she hears Reid say something like “Wait and see, Casey. Maybe he’s just misunderstood…”

She fumbles around the room until she finds the lamp at the bedside and flicks it on. Light falls across a slip of paper on her side of the bed and she dumps her bag while reaching for it. She peers at it to make sure she’s seeing it correctly in the dim light, and then her hand begins to shake. It’s an ink drawing of Casey done in Reid’s distinctive hand. Casey’s kneeling on the floor on top of a large piece of paper, coloring furiously with a crayon, her tongue poked out of her mouth sideways in concentration. Reid’s proportions are off, as they are in everything he draws, but he utterly captures the emotion of the moment – Casey’s fervor, her excitement. The drawing is accented by light watercolor washes to highlight Casey’s face and hair – there’s a rosiness about her that sort of sums up how alive she is, present in what she’s doing. Emily’s heart makes a painful throb behind her ribs, and another when she reads the scrawl below the drawing.

_We missed you._

And she nearly loses it. There’s an ache that lives deep within her for this – her family, her calm sunlit center – that never eases. It’s not a pain she ever wants to live without, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t surprise her or break her down on occasion. She has a hard time remembering what it felt like to be unconcerned about these things: home, commitment, motherhood. She knows there was a time in her life when she decided they weren’t for her, but that time seems very distant and has a fogginess that suggests it might have happened to someone she knew once rather than her. Because _now_ the things that mean everything to her exist outside of her body. Reid, Casey, her mother, the team. Her choices no longer begin and end with her. It’s a polar shift away from the sulky teenager who sought to disrupt more than please, or the hurt twentysomething who looked after herself first, defending against the entire world that was her enemy. It’s even a step away from the woman who tried to deflect her friend from loving her, certain that the only thing they’d achieve would be ruin and resentful alienation from one another. Now she’d die for others. She’d already killed for them. And when she showed them her scars and her bloody hands, they still thought she mattered.

She holds the drawing until her vision blurs too much to make the lines out, her hand still shaking. She chokes down the noises that are trying to escape her, her free hand moving to cover her mouth when she fails to negotiate that. Everything she wants, everything that truly matters, is here around her, under her shaking hands just _waiting…_

She forgets about changing, forgets about the dead children back in Kansas, forgets about her uncertainty with what to do next. Making it to the bedroom door she stops and watches Reid reading to Casey, his head bent over her shoulder as she sits in his lap, both curled towards the book before them. Casey squeaks at something and turns to look up at her father, her tiny mouth an O of surprise. Reid grins back, all teeth and matching delight, and her entire body sends out this unexpected wave of _Yes_ that rocks her against the doorframe.

Jesus fucking Christ. She wants to go back in time to that mousy, shy guy she met a decade ago and blow his naïve mind by telling him “One day we’re gonna love each other like we invented the concept”. She smiles a little when she thinks that he’d probably ask her what time travel is like in between bouts of blushing and stuttering.

Casey reaches up and clumsily grabs Reid’s glasses, pulling them off and smooshing them up to her eyes backwards.

“No, Casey, no,” he gently tries to retrieve them but Casey twists back to the book and pretends to read with the arms sticking out poking the pages. “Casey, love… Daddy needs those…” 

He wrestles them away, grubby smudges over the lenses, and Casey peeps angrily, as if he’s the sworn enemy of fun.

“Daddy is a bad rabbit!” she scolds.

“Daddy’s a blind rabbit, not a bad one,” he sighs, and then looks up and catches her staring. “Hey, love…” He grins.

Her heart stops dead in her chest, and all the processes associated with it stop dead as well.

“Would you…” she gasps and then forces air back into her non-working chest in order to wheeze out the rest. “Would you… like to get married?”

It’s probably just a moment. It’s probably no time at all to a normal person. But the gap between her whispered question and his response becomes this arid, desolate place where she’s alone on one side of the earth and everyone else is on the opposite side, just below the horizon. Then his grin, which was already big, gets so huge it might crack the walls.

“Yes, please,” he murmurs back softly. And Casey grabs his glasses again.

\----- 

He holds her free hand at the shop. It’s not necessary but she doesn’t mind it. He’s worried about the pain, even though there’s barely any at all. She reminds herself that he wasn’t around for her first time, and this is so important to him. To them both.

“So, when did you two get married?” the tattoo artist asks as he wipes away the excess ink, squints, sees a spot he’s missed, and buzzes his gun again.

“Two hours, thirty-seven minutes, forty-one seconds ago,” Reid says without hesitation, his hand tightening around hers. The tattoo guy looks up as if he’s just been given a smartass answer, but changes his mind when he sees the way Reid is looking at her, as if they are alone together.

“Oh,” he says instead, and then gives Emily’s left ring finger one last wipe with alcohol. “Well, that’s it. You’re both done. Congratulations.”

Emily looks down at the thin band of black ink around her finger, and then at the slightly thicker one around Reid’s left finger, already beginning to pucker at the edges from the needle assault. They didn’t tell anyone, not even Elizabeth. They just got dressed up, handed Casey off to J.J. and Will for the evening and claimed to be heading out for a ‘date night’ instead of down to the municipal court building. There wasn’t much discussion about it; somehow, they just understood it had to be this way. People might get angry with them, but… they began in isolation – only for each other – and Emily thinks it’s only fitting that they take this next step together the same way. 

Reid stands next to her in his best suit, his fingers linked with hers, in the middle of a midtown tattoo parlor with flaming skulls and cheeky devil flash art on the walls. He looks completely out of place and, no doubt, the artist thought so too when they walked in. But she knows he isn’t; he’s not out of place anywhere now that she really sees him, and he sees her. He’s permanent, like math, like ink under your skin. And with two simple black bands, she knows that she’ll never be out of place anywhere again either.

She rises from the chair, sleek dress floating down her thighs as the hem settles into place. His eyes are riveted to her, mouth open slightly with a surprised curl to his lips. It’s as if he’s walking through a dream and doesn’t want to do anything that might rouse him from it. She feels herself blush as she thinks _‘I’m his dream?’_ , but honestly, he’s hers, so it’s not such a stretch to imagine he feels similarly. The artist rambles on about aftercare, but Reid just watches her, mumbling incomprehensible responses where necessary. Emily tips the guy without looking at him, and maybe it’s a lot because he shuffles away and gives them a modicum of privacy under the fluorescent lights and with the Ramones blaring from the gigantic floor speakers. She steps into Reid so that they brush from hips to chest, like they’re going to dance. Her fingers twist in his, trying to get closer. She smiles. _Never alone again. Our tree is forever._

“Let’s go home,” she says, and he kisses her reverently before leading them both out into the warm evening.


	71. Chapter 71

“Daddy! Where’s my sneakers?”

Reid winces at the volume and then sighs. “Casey, my hearing is just fine. There’s absolutely no need to shout.”

Casey turns the corner and hovers in his office doorway, chin tucked in and looking up through long, dark lashes the way she does when she’s trying to get away with something. Reid ruefully thinks she’s learned this from Emily.

“I’msorry,” she mumbles, clasping her hands behind her back. Her braid has already come loose, stray tendrils curling into her face. Reid rises from his desk chair and wanders over to the door, kneeling down and pulling the elastic away from the mess to start the braid again.

“Casey, you’re a mess, love. How did this happen? It’s not even nine a.m. …”

“I dunno,” Casey squirms. She hates being fussed over, and it’s all for nothing anyway as Reid knows she’ll look like a half-wild banshee again before she makes it to school.

“Did Mama ask you to _ask me_ about your sneakers, or did she ask you to find them yourself?” His fingers flick through her tangles quickly.

“Find them myself,” Casey mumbles, hoping he won’t hear her.

“Where did you last see them?”

“The living room. By the couch.”

“Well,” he finishes the braid and rocks back on his ankles to survey his work. “That sounds like a promising place to start, doesn’t it? Off you go…”

Casey sags and half rolls her eyes – something else he’s decided she’s acquired from Emily – and then she shuffles away to the living room with painful, dramatic slowness. He bites his lip to stop the laughter because he’s trying to do the parenting thing right now and _not_ be entertained by his daughter’s extreme flare. He watches her turn the corner into the living room and then sees a pair of eyes and small hands gripping the doorway to the nursery, staring at him. He sags against the doorframe to his office and smiles.

“Hello, chickadee,” he says gently, trying to coax her near. Alex is shy, even with her family. “What are doing down there, huh?”

Alex edges her way through the doorway so she’s half seen. She’s hard pressed to withstand her father’s allure on the best of days, but sometimes she still tries. She’s in her pajamas still, a purple one-piece with small feet sewn on like a superhero costume. Reid wonders how she escaped Emily and is about to ask, when he sees the worry etched in his three-year-old daughter’s features, and his heart seizes in his chest.

“Alex, baby, what’s the matter?”

“Daddy,” she whispers and edges into the hallway, but still not coming to him. Her lower lip shakes and the pain that unleashes in him is too much to bear. Not his sensitive, thoughtful baby girl… He raises his arms as he crouches in his doorway.

“C’mere, chickadee.”

Alex shuffles forward a few steps and then runs until she reaches him, arms latching around his neck as if he’s going to disappear on her. Her little heart is hammering in her chest when he presses her close and he folds her into him silently promising to make whatever it is go away for her.

“Alex, what’s wrong? Why are you sad, love?” He strokes her hair from her face, which is scrunched up and rosy. Unlike her sister, Alex takes after Emily with her hair, but quite obviously has more of Reid’s personality, as well as his eyes. He strokes her heated cheek as she tries to bury her face in his chest. “C’mon, talk to Daddy…”

“Mama’s leaving,” she whispers wetly as the tears start. Reid doesn’t understand.

“Just to the office, love. Just like she always does. She’ll be back tonight.”

“Casey says… i-it’s different.”

Oh. Reid makes a note to have _another_ talk with Casey about this sibling rivalry thing. He rocks Alex in his arms.

“Casey was being confusing. Mama has a new job – that’s what’s different – but she’ll be home almost every night just like she is now. She’s not leaving us.”

“New job?” Alex chokes.

“Yes. She’s the boss now. Uncle Aaron didn’t want it anymore, and so he gave it to her. It’s her job to make sure Uncle Dave, Aunt J.J., Aunt Penelope, and Uncle Derek are happy and safe. It’s a very important job – you should be proud of her.”

“S-she’s… not g-going away?”

He wipes the tears from Alex’s face and sees the fear of losing that haunted him for so long. He swears that his children will not live with that fear.

“She might go away on little trips – like she’s done before. To catch bad guys.”

“Bad guys,” Alex nods. Both Casey and Alex understand that concept. Reid’s not so sure how comfortable he feels about that.

“But most of the time she’ll be here, with us. I promise, chickadee.” He brushes his lips into her hair and she nods again. He hugs her tight and she hugs him back just as fiercely. Underneath the worry, Alex is a fierce child, just like her sister. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Alex sniffles, but the tears have stopped.

“And I’ll always be here, Alex. Mama might go away, but she always comes home, doesn’t she? Mama and Daddy will never let you and your sister be alone. What do we always tell you?”

“That our tree is a safe place,” Alex says softly, a smile creeping back across her face at the familiar phrase.

“That’s right. We all love the tree. Why would we ever leave it behind?”

Alex shrugs and sighs against his chest. He holds her close for a moment longer, just enjoying the peace that he coaxed out of her. Then he remembers that nothing banishes fear like having something to do.

“Can you do me a favor, chickadee?” Alex looks up, eager to please him. “Can you help Casey find her sneakers? She’s lost them again.”

Alex nods and wiggles out of his arms, feet slipping on the hardwood floor as she tries to complete her task as quickly as humanly possible for him. Reid steadies her with a smile.

“Easy there, love. She’s in the living room.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Alex says over her shoulder as she beetles her way to find her sister.

Reid stands with a crack of his knees and a satisfied smile. He has to enjoy the victories that he can. He’s under no illusion that all of his children’s problems will be so easily fixed.

“Hey.”

He looks down the hall and sees Emily’s disembodied head peeking sideways into the hallway from the nursery. “Where the heck are all of our kids?” Her face creases up in irritation.

“Living room,” he smiles. Emily steps out and walks towards him dressed in her most powerful of power suits. She looks like an officially-dangerous Greek goddess or something. The mental image amuses him. “Casey’s lost her shoes.”

“Well, that’s a day ending in ‘y’, isn’t it?” Emily sighs just before she gives him a good morning peck. His arms loop around her waist to prevent her from backing away and she looks at him curiously, with a smile and a palm placed on his chest. “Hey, Grabby McGraberson, what’s doin’?”

“Nothing,” he grins, cinching her closer. “Just trying to show my wife how proud I am of her with her shiny new job…”

She rolls her eyes at him _just_ like Casey. “I’m sure it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s probably a practical joke that Hotch has been planning to inflict on me for decades…”

“Hmmmm, that’s doubtful. He seemed genuinely excited about retirement. I expected to see him skip, he was so gleeful about it.”

“Shit,” she laughs. “I’d pay good money to see that. With his tie fluttering in the wind as he hopped…”

Then Reid is laughing, the two of them vibrating against each other in delight. When he catches his breath, he stares at her warmly again. “I left a present for you in the kitchen.”

“A PG-rated present?” Emily’s eyebrows pop up.

Reid sighs. “It’s in _the kitchen_. Of course, it’s family-friendly.” Emily looks slightly disappointed. He continues. “It’s a lunchbox. With your lunch in it. I made you a lunch for your first day. It has a Twinkie and everything.”

“A Twinkie? Where did you even find one?”

“The answer to that is unsettling, so just rescind the question and move on.”

“Oooookaaaaaay…”

“Play nice with the other kids on your first day, alright? Share the Twinkie. Make some friends.” He’s grinning manically now, enjoy himself far too much.

Emily snorts. “Screw that. I’m the boss now. Anyone who displeases me is gonna get sent to the parking lot to wax my car. Even Rossi. _Especially_ Rossi. My corner of the Bureau is gonna be a terrible, dark fiefdom with me as its glorious, fearsome queen.”

“Oh my god,” he laughs and then kisses her, nuzzling her cheek when they break apart. “Is it wrong that image is turning me on a little?”

“It’s wrong right now,” she nips his jaw playfully. “At seven-thirty in the morning with our children in the next room. But it may be less wrong later on tonight after we’ve put the chickens to bed.”

“Noted,” he sighs and captures her lips for a kiss that he meant to be casual, but ends up being quite heated. She pulls away breathlessly, her cheeks rosy and smiling at the surprise of him. He’ll never get over how he can surprise her so often.

“Steady there, babe,” she husks. “I’ve got a whole day to get through first.”

“Yeah, uh… sorry.” He blushes too, eyes flicking to hers and away again. “You’re always wildly tempting though…”

“The things you say, Doctor…” she murmurs in a sly fashion that does nothing to make him behave himself. He decides that _he_ has to steer them to a safer topic before they do something inappropriate with one another.

“Hey, ummm, Alex was all worked up just now,” he begins.

Emily’s brows crease. “What about?”

“Your new job. She thought you were leaving us.”

“Leaving? Why?” Emily looks devastated in a flash. “Where did she get an idea like that?”

“Casey.”

Emily grumbles. Reid nods in sympathy.

“To be fair, I don’t think Casey meant to frighten her. It just worked out that way. Casey told Alex that you were going away to work but that it was different this time. Alex sorta spiraled it from there, I guess.”

“Christ. She gets that from you,” Emily huffs and pokes his chest. “Poor little chickadee…”

“Yeah, well, I set her straight but maybe you want to reassure her as well? You can never have too much security at that age.”

“Of course, I will,” Emily nods, face drawn into a scowl as she considers her youngest child. “Perhaps we could both pick her up from daycare today. That might help.”

“What about your first day? Daycare gets out at four-thirty…”

“It’s my first day, Spence. How many fires could I possibly need to put out on Day One? And Alex is more important anyway.”

“I suppose the amount of fire suppression you may be required to exercise is dependent on whether Hotch is punking you or not,” Reid shrugs. “But you’re right: Alex is more important. It would be great if you could meet us for the pick-up.”

“I’ll be there.” She leans in and brushes a kiss to his cheek. “How did you calm her down anyway?”

“I reminded her about the tree.”

They both fall silent and watch each other. The tree is sacred. They can’t explain it to anyone else, but everyone in their house understands the meaning of that statement. Eventually Emily nods, her hand stroking circles into his chest – the spot just over his heart where a boy and a girl sit under a tree and two birds fly overhead.

“Good,” she whispers.

“Found them!” Casey suddenly shrieks making Reid and Emily jump together.

“Christ!” Emily curses.

“Casey…” Reid warns.

“Sorry!” It’s yelled from the living room an instant before Casey appears in the hallway displaying her shoes triumphantly, Alex shyly bringing up the rear.

“Who found them?” Emily asks.

“Alex did,” Casey murmurs. Behind her, Alex smiles and tries to hide it with her hand. “You know she finds everything.”

“She does,” Reid says warmly, proud of his quiet girl. “Did you thank your sister?”

“ThankyouAlex,” Casey says by rote and without sincerity. Reid sighs. You take what you can get. Then Casey gives her parents a quizzical look. “What are you doing?”

They are still wrapped up in each other, but it’s not as if this is a new sight to the kids.

“I’m telling Mama how proud I am of her,” Reid answers refusing to be cowed by his offspring.

“No, you aren’t. You were kissing,” Casey says it with disgust. “Yuck.”

Alex pipes up “Yuck” behind her sister, not because she disapproves, but more to curry favor with Casey. And it works, Casey turning to smile at her younger sister in confederacy. 

“Listen, squirts, without kissing, you two wouldn’t even exist, okay?” Emily explains in a long-suffering way. “So, cool it.”

Casey looks back at them, confused. “You make babies by _kissing?_ ”

And suddenly both Emily and Reid are stuttering and flustered as their children look on with interest. Emily pulls it together first, wiggling from Reid’s grip and hustling forward to her daughters.

“Nevermind that. Casey, put your shoes on. Alex, come with me – you need to get dressed. Chop, chop! Don’t want to make me late for my first day, do you?”

Emily scoops up Alex and hurries back to the nursery, looking over her shoulder at Reid who mouths ‘Nice work’ at her. She winks at him and then disappears. Reid turns his eyes back to Casey, who’s still watching him expectantly, sneakers dangling from one hand.

“You heard your mother,” he mumbles. Casey’s eyebrows rise and her mouth opens to argue, but he cuts her off with a finger. “Some things you just aren’t meant to know about until you’re older, Little Bird. Trust me.”

Casey huffs and crosses her arms over her chest in defiance. Then she turns on her heel and marches back into the living room.

“I’ll just ask Miss Summers about it at school today,” she threatens over her shoulder. “ _She_ says there are no wrong questions…”

“Casey, you will _not_ ,” Reid warns as he follows her, but it’s an argument he knows he’ll lose. If not today, then eventually. 

She’s equal parts Emily-stubborn and Reid-curious, which will make Reid’s future as a father extremely complicated. But Casey still falls into the rarified category of ‘best things he’s ever tried’, right along with having Alex (by choice rather than an accident), taking control of his future, forgiving Emily, finding the nerve to fall in love with her in the first place, and showing a friend his tattooed secrets. 

There is no happiness without fear, love without sacrifice, and now that he has enough distance from the darker periods of his life to grant him perspective, he sees the worth of his suffering, pain, and sadness. It allows his joys to stand in relief, easy to make out amongst everything that came before. It has led him here, to this sunny house that he loves without reservation, along with everyone in it. He is finally who he was always meant to be; whole, connected, and free to argue with the ones he loves most about things that don’t really matter at all. He has built the things he wanted to see in the world, made them real when they were only dreams for the longest time. Now the setbacks don’t matter because everything he built _exists_ , and no one will ever take that knowledge away from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this story has been unlike any previous writing experience for me. I usually do not post a work-in-progress, and this has been a rule for me for many years as a way to keep the audience’s influence out of my head. I love my readers – _love_ you guys – but I have to fight to keep an individual story on track and sometimes an errant comment can derail that. Because of the way this story began (as a drabble series), I decided to break my rule this time.
> 
> As the story grew and developed, its focus changed, and it is a much different animal now than it first was. Some of you may be disappointed by that. Others are not. That’s all fine. I’ll admit that the end result is quite different from what I imagined. I’m not one to shy away from criticism, and I encourage readers to tell me what they think if it’s part of a constructive conversation. No one enjoys being told they are wrong or mistaken or that they’ve missed the mark somehow, but sometimes these comments can help you become better if they are presented in a conscientious manner, with respect and a willingness to listen to a response.
> 
> Even those of you who want to express your disappointment, with no semantic content to your comments other than “I don’t like what you’ve done to this”, I tend to give you a pass on those because you have the right to express that, and I should hear it. 
> 
> But you only get to do that once. 
> 
> Those of you who came back chapter after chapter and continued to complain _without_ looking to be constructive or respectful of a process that, honestly, you aren’t a part of, you crossed a line. If you don’t enjoy something, you walk away. Even little kids know this. No one is forcing you to sit at my table and eat brussel sprouts. Coming back, again and again, with no other purpose than to insult, complain, or tear down something you don’t agree with isn’t free speech, it’s **bullying**. Just because you’re upset, doesn’t mean you’re right.
> 
> I create fanworks because it makes me happy. I do it for free and post them publicly because others may find them interesting, and that makes me happy as well. But, with few exceptions, I do not create them FOR any of you. It is for my joy, my happiness, my corner of the world to decorate and make brighter. What right do any of you have to demean that for me or any other author/artist? Why do you feel your outrage over a _fictional character_ outweighs the joy I’m trying to create for myself? If you’ve ever been excluded, if you’ve ever been bullied or abused or told that you don’t matter, if you have children who’ve been bullied and watched as it slowly tears apart their self-esteem and individuality, why would you even consider doing this to another person over something so frivolous? I guarantee that if you were standing in front of me, face to face, you wouldn’t dare. You’d feel ashamed, and you should. To be pointlessly cruel shows a fundamental lack of empathy. If you’re reading this and beginning to feel defensive, then this note is _for you_. That defensiveness is your gut telling you that you’ve done something you shouldn’t. Innocent people don’t feel guilt over hurts they haven’t caused. So, Defensive Ones, I’m looking at you and saying: I hope you feel ashamed. I hope you think twice before you try this again. And, whatever you thought you’d achieve, it didn’t work.
> 
> Fandom is supposed to be about community. People gathering together over a shared, crazy love for some stupid tv show, or movie, or comic book. Outsiders already think we’re weird, they already tell us that this is pointless and a waste of our time. Why come into a community that is prepared to support and encourage you, and then spend your time doing the same things that outsiders already do to us? When you’ve torn down this safe space, where will you go then to feel included? And just because your negativity was couched or done passive-aggressively doesn’t make it less egregious than if you told me to fuck off or that my efforts were shit. There are degrees of shittiness when it comes to abuse and bullying, but at the end of the day **it’s all still just SHIT.**
> 
> We must be better – all of us. We must support, and share, and grow. And if you can’t do that, well… to paraphrase Jane Austen, be quiet and restrict your remarks to the weather.


End file.
